


Mistaken

by blythechild



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Canon Divergence, Confusion, Developing Relationship, Discovery, Drinking & Talking, Drinking to Cope, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Fake Character Death, Friends With Benefits, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Trust, Male-Female Friendship, Mistakes, Misunderstandings, Porn with Feelings, Romantic Friendship, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-09 00:30:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 41
Words: 52,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1962084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone has assumptions about Spencer Reid. It’s all <i>anyone</i> has because he’s notoriously hard to categorize. Prentiss decides to delve deeper but isn’t prepared for the confusing character that she discovers beneath his twitches and quirks – it’s almost as if he’s two different people. Since all of her assumptions appear to be wrong, it’s hard to trust her instincts, especially when her instincts tell her that she’s becoming fascinated by someone who may be incapable of becoming fascinated in return.</p><p> </p><p>This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created as an entertainment. This work contains adult themes, implied violence and sexual content - it should not be read by those under 18.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a canon divergent story. It contains canon elements from season 2 right through to "Lauren" in season 6. I have taken license with some details but the basic timeline should be recognizable. Also, there is a discussion of the motivations of rape in this story, so if that's triggering for you, please skip this fic.
> 
> Basically, this is a weird 'ship fic. Or a story about staring... I haven't really decided yet.

She only caught the last few flicks of his hands before he quietly returned the completed puzzle to the table between them. Her shock at his speed and understated assurance threw her and she did what she always did when she felt unbalanced.

“There’s a lot to hate about you, Dr. Reid.”

He looked at her then for the first time, as if he had forgotten that she was sitting across from him. His expression didn’t give her anything but his eyes suddenly seemed impossibly huge, like an animal caught in the crosshairs understanding his fate an instant too late. As quickly as it traveled across him, it disappeared, and he shrugged and returned to his book without a word.

She had hurt him - she was sure of it - and she was sorry. But she’d seen something else there too. She hadn’t known him very long and his vast array of ticks and idiosyncrasies made for an impressive shield against intrusion. But it appeared as though, sometimes, an indefinable rawness peeked through his layers at them all. And sometimes, it just peeked through long enough for her to notice it. Surely there was more to his sudden act than just a passing interest in a puzzle. After all, the puzzle was a symbol of love, wasn’t it? Spencer Reid wasn’t the type to act without thought; everything he did had purpose. 

Of all the members of her BAU team, she had never imagined herself with him. Picturing herself with a co-worker was an idle game that she played when she was bored, and her current job offered her a variety of inviting daydreams. But she had never considered Reid. He was a boy, she told herself, and probably still a virgin. But that wouldn’t stop _him_ from imagining _her_ , she thought. 

She flushed suddenly and then shook it away. They were all adults who spent far too much time together; it was natural to fantasize even if that’s all it would ever be. Even awkward Dr. Reid. 

She felt ashamed that she had snipped at him and that he seemed to let his intentions slip. She ought to do more to protect him, or maybe expose him to the wider world so that he could develop a real attachment to someone instead of making jokes at his expense. Sometimes she hated how callous she could be.

She watched the sunlight fall across his face as the plane banked and he concentrated on his book. The contrast highlighted his sharp bone structure, the soft burr of a developing five o’clock shadow, and the paler tones in the waves that lay tucked behind one ear. Perhaps it was the first time that she really saw it: Reid was handsome. And like a light being switched on, something in her instantly changed.


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey, Pretty Boy, wanna join us for a drink? We’re heading out to Delancy’s.”

They had been planning the evening around Prentiss’s desk for ten minutes but he hadn’t once lifted his head from his case report. When Morgan called out to him, he startled as if he wasn’t aware of them being there in the first place.

“I have to finish this.”

“C’mon, Spence.” J.J. rolled her eyes. “It’s Friday night and it’s been a helluva week…”

He stared at her. “Aren’t they all?”

“That’s not really the point, kid, it’s just a convenient excuse.” Morgan flashed his pearly whites. “This is an opportunity to socialize.”

“Oh.”

Prentiss watched him squirm in his chair a little. Everyone knew that he and Morgan had a standing agreement to school him in the finer points of human interaction. Clearly Reid was aware of his social blindness and wanted to do something about it, but that didn’t mean that he looked forward to these situations.

“Rossi bailed and Hotch has to go home to Jack, so Morgan needs you to even the odds against all of this estrogen.” She leaned forward and smiled at him.

“And you think that _my presence_ will help with that.” He sounded dubious.

“You’re a man, aren’t you?” She was certain that a few drinks would help with that. “It’ll be really low key, Reid. No test afterwards, I promise.”

He stared at her as he had previously with J.J. - just a blank analytical look while his mind did some quick math. He stood and flicked his sports jacket from the back of his chair while they all watched him.

“I think that I’d prefer the prospect of a test, but… okay, I’m in.”

“Atta boy.” 

Morgan walked over and gave Reid a rough sort of man hug around the shoulders that only served to show how slight and awkward Reid was by comparison. Prentiss kept the annoyance from her face - after all, Morgan always meant well. They all did, but she was only now starting to see that they often made things harder for him. Why was he the one who was always trying to conform for them? It was rarely the other way around.

“Lemme get Garcia, and we’ll go.”

Morgan bounded off in the direction of Garcia’s tech cave while they made their way towards the elevators. Prentiss fell in beside Reid as they walked.

“It’ll be fun, you’ll see.”

He nodded once and tried to smile at her, though she noticed that he found it hard to maintain eye contact for too long.

“I’ll try my best.”

The statement made her feel almost as ashamed as she did that day on the plane.


	3. Chapter 3

“Here you go.”

The waitress placed the huge plate of nachos in front of Reid with a friendly grin that he didn’t seem to notice. She was cute and overly attentive to him the moment that they were seated in her busy section, but other than ordering and murmuring thanks when she brought their drinks, he hadn’t reacted. Prentiss hid her smirk as she watched him, half stunned by his cluelessness and half pleased. 

“Anything else I can do for you?” The waitress gave it one last shot.

“No, thank you. This is sufficient for now.”

The waitress’s perkiness dimmed and she walked away. They’d most likely die of thirst before she returned to check on them again.

“Dude,” Morgan leaned across the table and shook his head. “She was into you.”

“Really?” Reid said around a mouthful of nachos. “How could you tell?”

“Jeez, Spence.” J.J. chuckled.

Garcia squinted at him. “It’s a shame… so cute, so brilliant, and yet so very, very dumb…”

“Easy there, sugar.” Morgan gave Garcia’s hand a quick squeeze. “We don’t want to scare him off. I need my wing man.”

“As if I’m letting any of these women get within the sphere of your personal magnetism…”

“Is that the point of being here?” Reid asked. “To flirt with strangers?”

“Well, not for me.” J.J. sipped her drink. “And probably not for Morgan if he knows what’s good for him. But for the rest of you…”

“No.” Morgan shot J.J. a look. “We’re here to relax, to hang out away from the office.”

“Huh, okay.” Reid went back to his nachos. 

“But it wouldn’t do any harm either.” Prentiss quickly added. “To flirt, I mean. It’s one way to meet new people and, well, even you have to admit that attraction is desirable.”

“While the recognition of physical attraction triggers the release of dopamine into our systems, it is an evolutionary reward designed to reaffirm our motivation to mate and thus perpetuate the species. It has no correlation whatsoever to the relatively modern human concept of emotional love or pair bonding - so while, yes, attraction is desirable in a Darwinian sense, it isn’t really relevant in this situation.”

Reid took another bite of nachos and then raised a finger signaling that he wasn’t finished to the table of gap-mouthed friends.

“In addition, your assertion that flirting is harmless is demonstrably false and I cite every single stalker or battered partner case that any of us has ever worked as evidence of this. Really, Prentiss, considering what you have seen of the world, I am amazed that you think that signaling sexual attraction to a stranger is a prudent course of action.”

“Reid!” J.J. hissed and gave him a censuring look.

He looked up from his plate into the bewildered stares of his colleagues and then immediately away again. His long fingers sought out a napkin and began to worry the edge of it. Prentiss’s shock was replaced by a need to bolster him somehow.

“Hey, it’s okay.” She leaned towards him slightly.

“I didn’t mean… to suggest…”

“Of course you didn’t. It was just a bit of a brutal analysis, that’s all.”

“I’m not very good at subtlety.”

“And we aren’t very good at accommodating your point of view either.” Prentiss looked around the table and Morgan and J.J. bowed their heads in acceptance of this fact.

“You aren’t wrong about needing to meet new people though.” He mumbled.

“Well, maybe this isn’t the place to do it…”

“No, this is as good a place as any.”

Reid sat up straight and began to look around until he caught the eye of their waitress across the room. He smiled and made a beckoning gesture and she eventually wound her way back to them through the throng.

“Can I get you something else?”

“Yes. I… I’m sorry, but what is your name? I felt sure that you told us when we sat down but my memory isn’t terrific.” Reid continued smiling as the rest of the table kept their expressions neutral.

“Oh, it’s Aurora.”

“Aurora… what a beautiful name. Did you know that Aurora was the goddess of the dawn? She brought light back to the world after the terrible darkness each night. She was robed in every hue found in nature, she brought sight back to man giving him the joy of recognizing all that he had once again. They say that Venus was the most beautiful of the gods, but I think that if you are the embodiment of light, if you can banish men’s fear and the monsters that lurk in the darkness - well, that would be the most exquisite beauty, would it not? Your parents must have cherished you to give you such a name.”

Prentiss watched Reid reel out his story and tried to keep her jaw from dropping. He smiled openly and innocently, using his hands to include the waitress into the group while explaining his story, and, most importantly, using unflinching eye contact. It was like watching a completely different person who just happened to look exactly like Spencer Reid. Prentiss turned to find the waitress flushed and fully engaged with him once again.

“Uh, well… thank you.”

“Spencer. My name is Spencer, and these are my friends: Emily, J.J., Penelope, and Derek. Guys, this is Aurora.”

Everyone smiled and waved. Garcia giggled a little and then tried to tamp it down.

“Aurora, I was hoping that we could order another round of drinks - no hurry, we’re okay at the moment and I can see how busy your section is. Whenever you get a chance.”

“Coming right up, Spencer.” The waitress winked and drew out his name a little.

“Perfect.” Reid gave her a look that bordered on seductive. Prentiss nearly choked on her Manhattan at the sight of it. “I really appreciate your attention on such a hectic evening.”

Aurora turned and cut through the crowd like her life depended on it. The moment she left, Reid’s smile disappeared and he slouched back into his seat like his old self again. 

“What the… _what_?” Garcia stuttered.

Morgan let out a low whistle. Prentiss just stared; they were all completely wrong about him. “Where did that come from?” She whispered. He glanced in her direction and gave her a look of confusion.

“What do you mean?” He asked. “Did I do it wrong?”

“Did you…?” She didn’t know how to answer that and instead looked up at Morgan with a plea. “You know him, right? What just happened here?”

“I dunno. I’ve never seen him do that before.”

Reid gave them all a sweeping, irritated look before returning to his nachos. “Your behavior is frustratingly incongruous.”

“Is that your way of telling us that we’re weird?” Prentiss smiled at him but he never looked up from his plate to see it.

“Wait.” J.J. whispered. “She’s coming back.”

Aurora appeared with a reprise of the table’s drink order and quickly laid them out with a genuine smile for each recipient. Reid’s was the only one that came with a napkin.

“Anything else you need,” Aurora’s gaze swept over all of them but lingered on Reid. “Just let me know. This round’s on me.”

Everyone raised a cheer to her and then she melted back into the busy scene around the bar again. Reid squinted and then pushed his napkin into the center of the table for all to see. On it Aurora had scrawled her name and phone number.

“No _way_.” Garcia whispered.

“Wow.” J.J.’s eyebrows rose.

“Dude, that was seriously smooth.” Morgan pointed to Reid across the table. “You should be schooling me.”

Reid shrugged his shoulders and took another bite of his nachos as if their consumption was his only goal for the evening. After a moment of general disbelief around the table, his eyes flicked momentarily to Prentiss again. She imagined that her surprise was hard to hide from him. He didn’t hold her stare for long - he never did - and then he reached out to retrieve the napkin. He folded it twice and then secreted it away in his jacket pocket. Prentiss felt something close to hostility wash over her in that moment and then she shook it away, confused by the reaction. Maybe she only liked him when she thought he was helpless. That thought made her feel predatory and uncomfortable. It seemed that he didn’t need as much help in the confidence department as she thought and yet all of them had been equally shocked by his display. If he could act this way, why didn’t he? She saw the plate of nachos edge itself closer to her.

“You want some of these? They’re pretty good.”

“Sure.” She took a bite and ruminated.

“Just because the behavior doesn’t come naturally to me, doesn’t mean that I cannot effectively mimic it when necessary.” He mumbled into his nachos.

She nodded and took another bite as she watched him assiduously avoid eye contact in the same manner that he had since the day they’d first met.


	4. Chapter 4

On Monday morning, tales of ‘the napkin incident’ made it around the bullpen. Reid sat at his desk, nose buried in a case report, seemingly uninterested in his peers’ responses. When Morgan retold the story to Rossi, the older agent chucked Reid soundly on the shoulder and gave him a knowing wink.

“A ladies man, I knew it! So, when are you going to call her, huh?”

Reid looked up - once again shocked to find himself surrounded by people - and resentfully massaged his shoulder.

“I’m not. I threw the napkin away.”

Prentiss sat up behind her desk.

“What? Why would you do that? I saw you put it in your jacket…” Morgan’s eyebrows tented in confusion.

“It would’ve been rude to dispose of her phone number at her place of business and possibly within her sight. I threw it out when I got home.”

“You wouldn’t even try going on a date with her, Spence?” J.J. asked gently. “It seemed as if she really liked you.”

“She wasn’t my type.”

“How do you know that?” Rossi smirked.

Reid gave him a look that said he should have known better, and then he leaned back in his desk chair and cleared his throat.

“I placed her age conservatively at twenty-six but she might have been as old as thirty. Eighty-six percent of individuals in the food service industry older than the age of twenty-four are likely to be undereducated. As the age of the worker increases, the percentage of those with a college degree drops dramatically. Her look of confusion when I mentioned the story of Aurora confirmed this, although ignorance of classical allusions in itself does not preclude a higher education.”

He raised an instructive finger, now in full professorial mode.

“In addition, her uniform was stained with various specimens of food and drink, but also human saliva along her left shoulder indicating that she had recently fed and burped an infant. None of the other waiters had a similar stain. Finally, when I mentioned how loved she must have been by her family, her eyes tightened and her mouth pulled slightly at the edges - indicating an unconscious anger or resentment - and then was replaced by a marked increase in pupil dilation indicative of arousal. It is merely speculation without further evidence but it would appear that Aurora comes from a dysfunctional or broken home that caused her to seek her father’s approval. Having failed to secure that paternal security, she has sublimated the need into seeking sexual approval from diffident men. The results have been similarly ineffective given that she is most likely a single parent.”

Rossi’s eyebrows lifted.

“Single women with young children typically seek potential life partners, not random sexual encounters, and given that Aurora probably only has a high school education, it is unlikely that we would form a mutually satisfying pair bond. Given all of this, it seemed disingenuous to call her and lead her to believe that none of this evidence would have any bearing on the success of our date.” Reid’s body slumped back into his chair, as if it couldn’t support the data dump _and_ the structural integrity of his frame simultaneously.

“Another brutal analysis.” Morgan sighed and broke the silence of the bullpen. “You may have moves, but I’m starting to see why you don’t date too often.”

“Once you remove the possibility of intellectual stimulation I just didn’t see the point, Morgan. I also don’t think that it would be fair to treat that young woman like a disposable sexual partner. I fail to see how my decision is ‘brutal’ and not pragmatic.”

“Pragmatism and romance don’t often travel together, kid.” Rossi slapped Reid on the shoulder again. “But I respect your refusal to ruthlessly sleep with her. You show more restraint than I did when I was your age.”

Morgan snorted and headed off to find some coffee. Rossi smiled and then turned to follow him.

“Never mind him. As if his dating life is such a paragon of success…”

The others melted away and Prentiss sunk back behind her desk again, at once relieved and irked by Reid’s decision. Again, the conflict she felt for her partner upset her. It was obviously a symptom of her mistaken need to help him be more himself - help that he clearly didn’t need - and she felt ashamed that she had misread him so badly. Bad, bad profiler… no biscuit…

Reid’s face popped over the partition that separated their desks.

“Do you think that I was overly judgmental about Aurora?”

“Ummm,” Prentiss wiggled uncomfortably in her seat. “Probably. But I also believe that your analysis was close to the mark. I know that you can’t switch off the profiler in you, but you might be prematurely closing off avenues of opportunity for yourself under the guise of personality analysis. Some people are more surprising than they seem on paper.”

_Kinda like you, dude…_

Reid stared at her for as long as he ever managed and then nodded and sat back down. This time, Prentiss swung her office chair to the side of her desk and leaned over to catch his eyes again.

“So, are you rethinking your decision?”

“No. But I’m going to attempt to view a person’s potential as well as all of their psychological parts in the future.”

 _Well, that’s something_ , she thought.


	5. Chapter 5

Detective Vosilius was hitting on Prentiss. Again.

Reid packed up his satchel and kept an eye on them from across the San Francisco homicide squad room. Prentiss had made the mistake of being gentle with her initial refusal when they first arrived. It was most likely motivated out of a mercenary need to maintain a working dialog with the local P.D., but Vosilius had taken it to mean that she was prioritizing and that he should try again later. Now that the case was over, the detective was being far less subtle with the innuendo. Morgan and Rossi had run some mild interference earlier but they were nowhere to be found now. Not that Prentiss required ‘saving’ - although Reid was curious as to why she hadn’t just told him an emphatic ‘No’ and be done with it.

Vosilius leaned in a little closer and smiled, completely ignoring Prentiss’s defensive body language: arms crossed, upper body turned slightly away, a tight smile that didn’t show any teeth and didn’t match the concern that was settling around her eyes. She took a half step backwards and Vosilius stepped forward to match the distance. Reid sighed and went back to arranging his bag. He knew it: Vosilius was an obsessive personality type. Often delusional or blind to normal emotional cues, they became fixated on minor details inflating them to a status of elevated importance. While they could initially be charming in their pursuit, their inability to conform to social norms often led them into love/hate relationships with the objects of their fixation. Reid hadn’t paid much attention to the detective in the beginning but suspected that there might be an ex-wife or string of girlfriends who could attest to this fact. Ironically, this trait probably made him an above average investigator.

Reid buckled his bag and swung it around his shoulder. He made one last look to see if he had forgotten anything and then headed for the street exit. His eyes grazed the squad room and landed on Prentiss again. She was now turned almost completely away from Vosilius but he still wasn’t receiving her signal. 

_Even I can read that one…_

Her eyes flicked up quickly and roamed the room. Eventually she caught sight of Reid and her expression lit up for a split second before she was forced to return to her conversation with the detective. Reid stopped in mid-step, unsure of what the look had meant. He cocked his head in curiosity and then changed direction making a beeline for Prentiss instead. He straightened his back and switched his bag to his other shoulder as he made it within hearing distance of his target.

“There you are, Em.” He said warmly as his arm slipped around her waist allowing his palm rest on her lower back. “I was looking all over for you. Are you almost done?”

Prentiss flushed as she looked at him but otherwise didn’t lose a step. “Yeah, I was just thanking Detective Vosilius for all of his help.”

“Oh yes. Thanks for everything.” Reid held out his hand to the bewildered detective. “It’s dedicated cops like you that help us close these cases as quickly as we do. Your attention to detail is commendable, Detective.”

Reid stood close enough to Prentiss to suggest intimacy while simultaneously demonstrating the detective’s lack of familiarity by _reaching out_ to him with his hand. He momentarily worried that other members of the team might see this display and be similarly convinced by it, but decided that the risk was low enough and could be counterbalanced by a willingness to be teased about it for the foreseeable future. Reid was used to being the butt of people’s jokes. Vosilius took a step back and put on a hasty mask of professionalism as he thanked Reid. Then Reid turned back to Prentiss and gave her a smile that he thought might seem flirtatious.

“Well, it’s an early start tomorrow but I saw this restaurant a few blocks away that boasts the freshest catch in the Bay area. Are you up for a little late dinner before we head back to the hotel?”

“Sounds great.” She purred and tried to cover another blush.

They both said a quick goodbye to the detective, who now seemed eager to get away from them, and left the station house. Once they were across the street and in the shadows between streetlamps, Reid dropped his arm, slouched, and moved to place two feet of space between them. All in all, he felt that his mimesis had been quite effective. He walked in silence, keeping pace with Prentiss and focusing on his feet as he considered the probability of Vosilius’s disorder eventually manifesting into criminal behavior.

“You didn’t have to do that.” She said quietly.

“No, I didn’t. You had him in hand. I just thought that it might provide you with a quicker exit, that’s all.”

“Oh.” She sighed. “You weren’t concerned about the others seeing it?”

“Who would believe it?” He said simply still looking at his feet.

She was quiet for a few blocks, just matching his stride as they walked through the fog together.

“It was a convincing act.”

“Thanks.” He let a smile curl one side of his mouth. “I’m never sure - it’s hard to be objective about interactions that are so alien to me in the first place.”

“You’ve never felt that familiar with someone else?”

“Feeling it and showing it are two very different things, Prentiss.”

“Sure, I guess.” She was quiet for another long moment. “Would you like to get some dinner anyway?”

“Not really. I promised to review a paper from a colleague at CalTech and am supposed to have preliminary edits for him by tomorrow. This case backed up my schedule a little. If I pull an all-nighter I’ll probably be able to email it to him before the jet departs.” He was organizing his evening tasks in his mind when he realized that he had forgotten the non-optional social response to refusing an invitation from a friend. “Oh, uh… perhaps some other time though.”

“Okay.” She sounded upset and he looked at her for the first time since they’d left the squad room.

“Did you actually want to have dinner with me? You weren’t just being polite?”

“I wasn’t being polite, Reid.”

“Oh.”

They turned a corner and arrived at their hotel. Reid focused on his feet again as they moved forward across cement, then carpet, and finally the reflective surface of the lobby elevator. He punched his floor number without looking up and stood considering the improbability that Prentiss would voluntarily want to spend an awkward hour making conversation with him over dinner. It didn’t seem like something she would do. He decided to make further enquiries about her invitation but when he looked up, he realized that he was alone in the elevator.


	6. Chapter 6

After the night out at Delancy’s, Morgan and Garcia tried to institute a regular team night for whoever felt up for it. With the exception of a few absences due to extended cases, they all settled into the routine easily, even Reid. Despite the initial idea of ‘meeting new people’, none of them seemed to spend much time socializing with anyone outside the team. Rossi flirted indiscriminately, much to everyone’s amusement, and Morgan was often eyed by a collection of attractive specimens wherever he went, but was careful to leave with Garcia every single time. Even Hotch managed to draw envious stares on the few occasions that he came out with the team in his impeccable suits and with his surprising dart playing skills. 

Still, as social experiments went, the results were a bust. After a year of mingling with the great unwashed of the D.C. area, they were all as unattached and dysfunctional as ever. Prentiss amused herself with imaginings of them pooling their retirement pensions so that they could all settle in the same senior care facility where they would no doubt spend most of their time profiling the help for deviant behavior. They’d just be a collection of cranky, stray cats that were all too old and tired to wander off to find families that would take them in.

 _Christ, I just need to go on a date or something_ , she thought idly. _Better yet - get laid…_ She shuddered to think how long it had been. It seemed as if she always put her personal life on the back burner, as if there’d be plenty of time for that later. But later was around the corner along with the next case, the next killer, the next all-consuming life-or-death struggle… they all existed simultaneously and wouldn’t line up to be dealt with in order. Her life wasn’t boring by any stretch, but she couldn’t help but want it to be _fuller_.

She looked across the partition and saw Reid bent over his paperwork. Did he feel that way as well? Or was his internal world so full already that there wasn’t room for baser concerns? While she always felt the need to protect him, just as the rest of the team did, he seemed the least disturbed by the unceasing flow of depravity that they waded through. With the exception of his addiction during her first year with the unit, he was remarkably well adjusted. She suddenly envied his ‘otherness’ as if it were a more effective shield against the isolation of their work than anything that anyone else had devised. As if she’d spoken aloud, he looked up from his report and directly at her. She stared back and he didn’t look away as he usually did.

“Wanna get a drink?” She surprised herself and, judging by the movement of his eyebrows, she surprised him too.

“It’s not Friday.”

“I don’t mean with the others at Delancy’s. Just us.”

_Whoa there, girl. Did you just ask Dr. Reid out? Should we take a moment to think this through a bit?_

“I just need to unwind a little…” She started to back peddle. “I thought it might be nice to _not_ do that alone.”

He was still staring, looking more confused than she had ever seen him before.

“You know what? Forget it. I know that socializing isn’t your fav-”

“Sure.” He nodded once and went back to his paperwork. “Can you give me ten minutes to finish this?”

“Ummm, yeah… okay.” She felt a bit stunned.

_Well then. Drinks with the Doctor…_


	7. Chapter 7

Reid suggested a place closer to the Capitol. It was far quieter than Delancy’s and considerably more sophisticated. There was a beautiful oak long bar with an Arts and Crafts era mural behind it, the lighting was muted and there was the vague hint of jazz underneath the frisson of conversation and clinking glassware.

 _Mingus_ , she thought and smiled.

There were almost no women there - it wasn’t a place where you went to pick up. Everything from the world-weary bartender to the deep, leather banquettes said that this was a place where people came to when they wanted shelter.

“This place is nice.” She said carefully.

“I come here a lot. There aren’t too many distractions and it’s close enough to my place that I can walk home if I have one too many.” His lips curled into a tiny smile as he avoided her eyes and waited for her to sit first in the booth they’d chosen.

“A drunk Reid.” She chuckled. “I think I’d pay money to see that.”

“You just need to stick around long enough. The show is free.” He waved over their server and they ordered.

They talked a little shop about their latest case while they waited for their drinks. It was never hard discussing murder with him, and he was one of the few people who didn’t make her feel self-conscious about doing it outside of work. She was always amazed by his enthusiasm for his job and that he didn’t wear it like some sort of morbid fixation. He loved the details and the puzzle of it all, and it was hard not to get caught up in his excitement even with all of his ticks and birdlike movements. Well, it wasn’t hard _for her_ , anyway… The server returned with their drinks and they shut the conversation down while he hovered. It reminded her that they were both acutely aware that what they did and who they were wasn’t ‘normal’.

“So, what’s on your mind, Prentiss?” Reid sipped his port and gave her a direct look after the waiter left.

Prentiss raised her eyebrows at him over her martini.

“C’mon. I’m not your first choice of drinking buddies…”

“What if you are?” She countered, feeling a little cornered. She didn’t really have a good answer to give him.

“Then that would be a noteworthy error on my part.”

“Okay, well… you’re my first choice tonight.”

“Hmmm, now we’re getting somewhere… which leads me back to my original query: what’s up?”

“I don’t know.” She sighed loudly and looked away from him. Then she downed most of her martini and began to trace the well-worn scars in the lacquered tabletop. She really didn’t know what she was doing there. It was an uncomfortable position to find herself in. She just wanted… just wondered…

“Do you ever feel like you’re just an observer of other people’s lives?” She blurted it without thinking. “I mean, there’s no doubt that the work we do is important, but… it’s all we do. We substitute our own lives with those of killers and dead people… like our lives aren’t as important as theirs.”

She couldn’t look at him - not even if her life depended on it. Where had this bout of self-reflection and existentialism come from? She’d just put a serious dent in her Fearless Prentiss image, and she didn’t understand the impulse to reveal this sensitivity to the most emotionally impaired member of her team. She felt him move and wondered if he felt as uncomfortable as she did in that moment. Then the atmosphere changed and she noticed that the waiter had reappeared at their side.

“We’ll need two more, please.” Reid murmured and then the waiter was gone again. She looked up and found him staring at her in wide-eyed wonder. “I think about that all the time.”

Something in her that had once clicked while looking at him now dropped another tumbler into place. She sat back into the worn booth and felt a smile break out over her. It didn’t seem like the right reaction to his response or the heaviness of the subject matter, but when a similar smile lit across his features she recognized the beauty of a kindred moment. 

It was the joy of being seen.


	8. Chapter 8

She felt Reid’s hands on her hips as she stood at the curb’s edge and tried in vain to flag a cab. She felt warm and soft all over, but that was probably just the five martinis. Then it hit her - _he’s touching me_. She turned around and gave him a hard, squinty look trying to figure out what was going on in that instant. He looked sort of warm and soft all over too, but there was also something determined in his face. He focused his stare back at her.

“Hold on. No falling into traffic or anything.”

She was about to get furious at him - she could hold her booze! - when his hands left her waist and she realized that he had been basically holding her upright. She quickly locked her knees into place and tried to avoid faceplanting in front of him. He lifted his fingers to his mouth and let out a piercing whistle that brought a cab to them like a magnet.

“Wow. Impressive.” She weaved a little.

“Thanks. It’s my one manly feature.”

She laughed too hard and nearly lost her balance but he reached out and held her steady until the cab pulled up and he got the door open. Her hands grasped his arms, thin but strong, as he slowly guided her into the back seat of the taxi. He felt hot under her grip and his face was remarkably close to hers as he kept her balanced. He was grinning - laughing simply because she was - and it transformed him, she thought. The amazing lines around his mouth, the colour in his cheeks, those wide hazel eyes looking back at her… she had the fleeting, martini-fueled inspiration to drag him back to her place. He pulled back a little once she was seated, his hands braced on his knees peering in from the doorframe.

“You remember where you parked?” He was still smiling.

“Yeah.”

“Good. The ticket’s valid until tomorrow morning at eight, so your car will be safe until you can come back to get it.”

“Whaddabout you? How’re you getting home? Get in here with me…” She started shuffling aside to make room for him, and once again she thought about kidnapping him to her condo instead.

“S’okay. I can walk, remember?”

“S’not fair…” _In more ways than one_ , her libido chimed in.

His confused look returned and she almost moaned at the loss of his smile.

“Yer not nearly as drunk as me.” She pouted. “I wanted ta see the show…”

“Another time. I promise.”

“Really? You won’t forget?”

“Eidetic memory.” He tapped his temple and smiled. “I won’t forget.”

His promise made her insanely happy. In fact, the whole evening held the flavor of some delicious secret that made her feel complete and important because she had been fortunate enough to stumble across it. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt that way in anyone’s company, and it had happen with Reid of all people. She sighed and reached out to cup his cheek with her hand; she wouldn’t realize until later that he didn’t twitch as she did it.

“Thanks, Reid. I really needed this.”

“What are number one drinking buddies for?”

_Oh my god, did he just make a sarcastic joke?_

“You’re sorta amazing when you wanna be, Doctor.” She murmured as her thumb stroked the line of his jaw.

His smile dimmed fractionally and he stared. She didn’t think that his eyes could seem any bigger but at that moment they looked like planetary bodies floating above his ever-changing landscape. The martinis reasserted their dominance and she hoped that he might try his luck and kiss her. The moment stretched out longer than she could usually withstand and, if the cab driver’s wiggling were any sign, longer than was socially acceptable. Then Reid slowly leaned into the car, brushed past her and handed something to the driver over the seat.

“1302 Hennessey Avenue. Make sure that she gets inside, okay?”

He backed out, shut the door, and stood on the sidewalk giving her an awkward wave. She waved back and felt a definite period being placed at the end of their secret evening. She was disappointed and her subconscious began to make noises about why she had wanted or expected something more to come out of the night. Surely it was a minor miracle to have had anything more than an anxious and difficult drink with Spencer Reid in the first place.

Through the cab’s back window, she watched as Reid, slouched and with his hands shoved into his pockets, turned away and walked home.


	9. Chapter 9

He had become obsessed with watching her hands. She didn’t use them as agents of conversation as he did, but they were almost as expressive given all that they _didn’t_ say. Her ruined fingernails were something that she tried to hide from others; an obvious tell in her otherwise flawless disguise. And, much like him, she avoided touching people unless she knew them. However, in her case there was a constant awareness of how her body, her touch might be perceived by others. Professionally, she wished to be taken seriously and seen as an equal, and personally she was circumspect and guarded about exposure. All of this he knew from their interwoven work lives, so he watched those hands carefully as they interacted with the world every day to see what else they might tell him about her internal world. 

Sometimes she touched him without thinking about it and he did his best not to be himself when it happened. After their evening out together, when she held his face and he had forgotten to startle at it, he became curious about the effect her proximity had on him. She’d smooth out his jacket across his shoulders when he was excessively rumpled (often), she’d snatch books out of his hands on the jet when she wanted his attention (slightly less so), and they’d communicate in interrogations through a brush of shoulders as they passed one another or a brief press on the arm (new behavior). It was all starting to become familiar, yet the effect hadn’t been translated to the rest of the team. J.J. had nudged him in a friendly way in the conference room last week and he had almost thrown his coffee on her in response. 

He felt her hand on his shoulder as she squeezed past him into the staff kitchen. He didn’t jump although his body tensed anyway - no matter how familiar it was becoming, he still seemed unable to relax into it the way he wanted to. 

“How’s the coffee this morning?” She smiled as she reached past him for a mug.

“I think my spoon could stand up in it unassisted. So, you know… just like every day.”

“Maybe you should give it up.”

He looked at her sharply. “Normal levels of caffeine have been proven to sharpen motor skills and cognitive function, no matter how briefly.”

“Yeah, but your coffee intake isn’t normal. It’s not even in the same zip code of normal…”

She gave him a wide smile that always made him want to smile back even though he wasn’t always sure how to do it. He watched as she tucked her hair behind her ear. If she had been flirting, it would have been a signal that she wanted him to see her whole face. But why would she be flirting with him? 

“Normal is overrated.” He mumbled and pantomimed extreme fascination in stirring his coffee.

“It sure is.”

Something in her voice made him look up again. She was looking down at her mug, stirring in sweetener. She raised the stir stick to her mouth and sucked the tip of it in between her lips. The gesture was casual until her eyes flicked up to meet his, and those lips smiled at him. It had been twenty-three days, eight hours and fourteen minutes since they’d gone to The Cloak and Dagger together, and since that evening Prentiss had smiled at him one hundred and twenty-seven times. It was a thirty-seven percent uptick of the expression in her specific behavior model. It was significant, but even more so was the variety of smiles that she presented. This one, for example, was one that he was unfamiliar with, and the way that her fingers were unconsciously tapping the stir stick suggested that he was _meant_ to take notice of it (which he would have anyway due to his interest in her hands).

Again, it felt like flirting. And, again, he wondered why she would be doing that. He boldly decided to perform an impromptu experiment.

“Don’t do that.” He murmured while slowly reaching up and drawing the stir stick from between her lips. Her pupils dilated slightly but she let him do it nonetheless. “These things are loaded with bisphenol A and assorted phthalates. It’s like stirring your coffee with potential carcinogens. Not to mention that it takes approximately one hundred years for them to biodegrade. You should use a metal spoon.”

She stared for a second before blinking and then stepping away with a disgusted look on her face. “Ugh! Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

She made an animated display of revulsion before dumping her coffee out and starting again. With a spoon. He leaned against the countertop and watched. 

Pupil dilation could’ve been indicative of attraction, or just a startle response to an invasion of personal space. No follow up re: propinquity or matching vocal intonation. Took my advice about the spoon. Ergo, friendship, not flirtation. New theory: increase in smile frequency could be entirely unrelated to me. She had mentioned that she really needed their night out. Perhaps discussing personal issues with a sympathetic compatriot had had a universal effect on her emotional state. I might have been the stimulus but am not the continuing influence. Correlation does not imply causation.

He nodded to himself and sighed.

“Whatcha thinking over there?” She smiled (number one hundred and twenty-eight) over the rim of her newly made coffee, apparently delighted that it was now cancer free.

“Nothing. I was just thinking something through to its logical conclusion, that’s all.”


	10. Chapter 10

They’d all cut out of work early and embedded themselves at Delancy’s. It was Morgan’s birthday and they had just shut down an Aryan militia in West Virginia with the sort of procedural certainty that made prosecutors send them bottles of scotch in thanks. Garcia had wrapped Morgan up in a lavender hug that bordered on sexual harassment and declared that it was Miller time. 

It was fairly late, and they had started early, so the whole evening had a surreal, disembodied quality to Prentiss. She was a little too drunk to be uncomfortable, but not drunk enough to be carefree. It was moments like these when her existentialist worries sunk into to her the most: they were happy, they’d had a victory, and yet she couldn’t forget how isolated she felt even in a roomful of friends. 

Garcia yanked Morgan onto the dance floor while everyone laughed. She watched them cut some fairly impressive moves and wondered, not for the first time, if they were sleeping together. She hoped that they were - they fulfilled each other somehow, and it certainly seemed satisfying by all outward appearances. It gave her hope that she’d find something similar in time, even if it wasn’t quite the same. She needed to know that something more was possible.

J.J. laughed while watching her friends and then got a mischievous twinkle. She stood abruptly and leaned across the table towards Reid in a dangerously unsteady way.

“Alright, Reid - c’mon. Let’s dance…”

She held out her hand and Reid looked at it as if she’d just offered him a scorpion.

“Not even at gunpoint, J.J. No offense.”

“Spence, we’re both drunk - no one cares about technique… c’mon, I’ll make it easy on you.”

Prentiss felt Reid tense in the banquette beside her. “No. Thank you.” He said it quietly but firmly, and she looked at him to see his eyes suddenly drop to the table in front of him rather than look at J.J. She wondered, with a sinking feeling, if he still had a crush on J.J. after all of these years.

“Leave the kid be.” Rossi came to the rescue with an exaggerated generosity that only appeared when he was drunk. He grabbed J.J.’s hand and swept her towards the dance floor with a flourish. “Stick with a guy who knows a thing or two about sweeping a pretty woman off her feet.”

J.J. let out a surprised whoop and allowed Rossi to carry her away towards Garcia and Morgan. Prentiss felt Reid relax once again beside her and wondered idly if his reaction would be the same if _she’d_ asked him instead.

“I don’t blame you.” She mumbled and smiled as she watched Rossi and Morgan challenge each other to a dance off with their partners.

“It was a bad idea - lives might have been lost in the process. I refused her for the safety of everyone here tonight.”

Prentiss looked over at Reid and saw a smile wrinkle the side of his mouth as his gaze flicked from the sight on the dance floor and then back to his drink. She laughed out loud in spite of her introspective mood and he looked up at her immediately.

“C’mon, you can’t be that bad…”

“Someone once said it was like watching a giraffe walking down an up escalator.”

She was taken aback by the comment, but more so by the warm, unflinching look he was giving her as he said it. He didn’t seem to find the statement offensive at all. She laughed again, this time with her whole body.

“Well, that certainly _sounds_ bad…”

He watched her, a smile moving across him like the tide. He seemed newly focused on her, as if he hadn’t known that he was sitting next to her all evening and was delighted to suddenly discover her there. It produced a tingle in her that she tried to shake away as the result of too much booze and too little food.

“Why aren’t you dancing, Prentiss?” He seemed genuinely curious.

“No one asked me.” She was still laughing. It was true enough and she honestly hadn’t expected anyone to ask. Since Hotch had already gone home and Reid obviously wasn’t going to offer, it hardly seemed worth worrying about.

He watched her intently with a strange half-smile. She realized that he had been staring for much longer than he usually did and wondered if he was finally getting comfortable around her. Enough to look at her, at any rate. He rotated his glass between his fingers with precise movements but didn’t look away from her.

“If my talents were more impressive than a low grade seizure, I would’ve asked you to dance…” He said eventually.

 _What?_ Prentiss went still as her grin melted away. Surely he hadn’t meant it that way, had he? She suddenly remembered that night in front of The Cloak and Dagger when his hands had held her upright and his smile had produced a lingering glow around them.

“Reid, are you attracted to me?”

He stiffened immediately and looked around to see if anyone was observing them. Then he shifted back and began worrying his cocktail napkin.

“No.” He coughed, his eyebrows tenting in confusion. Then he realized his mistake and raised his hands as if trying to calm her. “What I mean is, you are very attractive, Emily… I’d be a fool to deny that, but… we _work_ together. It’s not something that I ever gave myself permission to consider.”

She sipped her drink and glanced after Morgan and Garcia, suddenly feeling ridiculous.

“Why did you ask that?”

She shrugged without looking back at him. The music in the bar was beginning to inch its way into molar-vibrating territory that indicated how drunk the owners thought that their clientele should be at that point in the evening. Even with the raised decibel level, his pointed silence pierced her and she sighed, thinking that she wasn’t even close to being drunk enough to have this conversation.

“I sorta thought that you might have… well… _you know_ …”

“No, clearly I don’t know.”

She looked at him then and saw that same wide-eyed look that had first captured her attention on the plane so long ago, but now she saw it for what it really was: confusion. How could she have been so mistaken? It felt like junior high all over again: the awkward girl at the school dance shown up as the delusional kid who didn’t realize that the boy she’d been crushing on didn’t even know her name.

“It was the stupid star puzzle.” She pushed her drink away too quickly and it sloshed over her fingers. “I thought that you were trying to tell me something.”

“I like puzzles.” He said simply. “You seemed stumped by it so I decided to fix it for you.”

“Yeah.” She felt miserable. This was _worse_ than junior high.

“That case was nine hundred and thirty-seven days ago, Emily.” She heard the caution in his voice and suddenly became enraged that he might choose to pity her. “Have you - ”

“Just forget it, okay?” She said a little too abruptly. “It was a mistake. I misread you. It’s not like you have a well-defined personal life to draw from when judging these sorts…” 

She took a deep breath and tried to reassemble her expression into one of casual embarrassment. “You know what? It’s not important what I thought or what you intended or what either one of us feels about this at all. You’re right, of course - we work together. I’d really appreciate it if we could ignore that this ever happened. Just a silly, friendly hiccup - that’s all.”

“If that’s what you want.”

His shifty look was suddenly all concern. She’d seen that look before: he wanted to do whatever would ease her discomfort. Whatever he felt about the situation seemed irrelevant to him. As mortified as she was, it was nice to know that he was thinking about her reaction to the scene and not his own. That boy in junior high had broadcast his disgust at her across the whole school gymnasium. She could still taste the bile in the back of her throat as he pointed her out to his friends with a dismissive flip of his perfect blonde hair.

“Thank you, Reid.” She meant it.

“In light of… everything, you might consider calling me Spencer.”

She reached into her purse and laid a twenty on the table. The urge to flee tasted like metal in her mouth; something bitter and shameful that nonetheless led her in the direction that she wished to go. He reached for her hand but she retracted it cleanly, trying not to soak up the awkward smile that he offered as a truce.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.” She stood and gave him a tight smile in return. “Tell everyone that I said goodbye, okay?”

“Sure. I’ll tell them- ”

She didn’t wait for him to finish but just made a break for the entrance. She got nine blocks from the bar before she gave in to the stitch in her side. Leaning against a darkened doorway to catch her breath, she suddenly realized that she had been sprinting as if her life depended on it.


	11. Chapter 11

Nothing was different about him after that night. He didn’t react to her with more or less compassion than before, and he didn’t change the way he worked with her. He still found it hard to make eye contact, and still avoided being touched, but now she saw it in the wider context of his personality. He did the same thing with every team member; his treatment of her was nothing special. It was both a relief and a crushing defeat.

A few weeks later while working on a serial rapist case in Portland, Hotch paired them up to question a handful of men who had been banned from a local sex club for aggressive behavior. Prentiss noticed that the assignment made both of them uncomfortable, and she smiled to herself as she thought that _that_ was probably the reason why Hotch had matched them in the first place. Aggressive men didn’t intimidate Prentiss but she grew weary of constantly asserting her authority around them; she felt uncomfortable because of Reid. He was retiring around confident men and often became tight-lipped when questioning people about their sexual habits. She no longer chalked up this behavior to lack of confidence, but couldn’t find a new reason to justify his passivity. In the end, it just meant more work for her, as she would inevitably have to take the lead.

The last man on their interview list proved to be the most difficult. With a series of minor assault charges on his sheet and a significant chip on his shoulder about women in general, he was making the interview unnecessarily confrontational for Prentiss while almost ignoring Reid completely. When Prentiss attempted to discover why he had been banned from the sex club, the man calmly dismissed an attempted rape complaint and launched into a long-winded explanation as to why rape shouldn’t be considered a crime.

Prentiss held her poker face but felt Reid tense beside her. When she looked over at him she discovered that he was looking back at her, not the suspect. He seemed equal parts concerned and infuriated; it almost stopped her cold in her questioning. Then switching gears easily and without warning, Reid stepped to the suspect and placed a hand on his upper arm.

“I don’t think that you really understand what rape is.” Reid said quietly. It immediately silenced the suspect and threw Prentiss into the background of the conversation. If it had been anyone other than Reid, she would have resented the change in tactics, but she just stood back and watched in rapt curiosity.

“Rape is power. Rape is authority.” Reid continued as his hand lightly brushed up the suspect’s arm. “Power inspires an evolutionary instinct in humans. Those specimens who display significant power can attract mates more easily. Males are hardwired to seek it and females are compelled by it. It ensures that the fittest biological elements are perpetuated through offspring.”

The suspect appeared confused. He was nodding his head in agreement with Reid’s speech by his eyes kept flicking to the hand on his arm. His mouth twitched downwards whenever it moved over him. Prentiss remained still, not sure where Reid was going with this, but familiar enough to follow his lead. Reid took a step closer to the suspect; his hand gripped the man’s arm tightly and pulled him in.

“Not only females are compelled by power displays…” He murmured.

The suspect’s gaze flicked to Prentiss, pupils blown out in alarm. His whole body seemed to ask her ‘can he do this’? Prentiss watched as Reid raised his other hand and let it land on the suspect’s shoulder. It too began to rub lightly back and forth so that the suspect was trapped in his grip that was attempting to calm and seduce him. She’d never seen Reid come on to a man before and was a little taken aback by the success of his bisexual mimesis. But mostly she was concerned about where Reid was directing this suspect - it was a provocative tactic and she knew that Reid understood _exactly_ what he was aiming for even if she didn’t. She was worried about anticipating his next move alongside him now that he’d taken the reins so unexpectedly. 

“But what you are suggesting doesn’t really meet the criteria of a mating display.” Reid continued. “Rape is also punitive. Humans have codified physical inviolability for as long as we have walked upright. Rape is the ultimate punishment to one’s sense of individualism.”

“Hey man, back off.” The suspect growled and tried to dodge out of Reid’s grip. 

“Why?” Reid was all innocence. “Isn’t this what you want from others? For them to revere your power? To desire you for everything you have?”

Reid’s hand tightened on the suspect’s shoulder and drew him close enough to seem a step away from an embrace. 

“As I was saying, punitive rape is about violating one’s sense of self in such a fundamental way that the victim is forever altered by the act. Prior to the advent of modern medicine, our bodies were a mystery to us. An unwanted penetration, the depositing of bodily fluids - like a marking of one’s territory - could alter a victim’s sense of identity and safety forever. Imagine the impact that might have made on the primitive mind…”

One of Reid’s hands suddenly flicked up to cup the suspect’s jaw. His thumb began to stroke the man’s cheek gently. Prentiss felt adrenaline flood her in preparation for whatever would happen next. She watched as Reid leaned into the suspect, closer than she had even seen him get with a stranger. “Rape is about taking something from someone that they can never replace. And it’s about leaving something alien and unwanted behind…”

“Get off me!” The suspect reared back, ripping himself from Reid’s grip, and struck out blindly with his fists. Reid backed away quickly just as Prentiss moved between him and the suspect. The quick switch from questioning to conflict was so seamless between them that it almost seemed choreographed. Prentiss dodged the suspect’s hands and laid him out with a punch to the gut and a wicked right cross. As he lay at her feet moaning, she unceremoniously flipped him over and cuffed his hands together. She felt Reid slide up beside her.

“Feel better now?” He asked without emotion.

“Much. Thanks. Is that why you did it?” She looked back at him to take in his blank expression. He didn’t appear alarmed, confused, or upset - just curious. 

“Yes. He was annoying you, as well as wasting our time. I thought that by introducing an aberrant element to the situation, we could speed things to a rapid and more satisfying conclusion.”

“Oh.” Prentiss flushed at the thought that Reid had read her and the suspect before he acted. _How often does he do that?_ She shook it away, hoisting the groaning suspect to his feet. “Are you going to press charges?”

“I think that’s advisable, don’t you?” Reid considered the suspect dispassionately. “He’s not our UNSUB but I have a feeling that the club is covering up one or more assaults that he may have committed. It would be a public service to look into that… in the meantime, he can ruminate on the finer anthropological motivations for rape in communal lock-up.”

Prentiss just stared at him for a long moment, ignoring the grumblings about entrapment from the suspect. She was shocked when Reid held her gaze without flinching; it seemed as though the look had meaning for him.

“Thanks for having my back on this one.” He said eventually.

“Always. We’re a team.”

“Good.” He nodded once and then let his eyes drop and his shoulders slouch as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.


	12. Chapter 12

Mick Rawson had been sniffing around.

She’d seen his like before. _Player._ Hell, his ‘like’ had pretty much been her whole adult dating history, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch that he, with his profiler skills, marked her early on as a viable target. And he was good looking, and funny, and brash, and probably had a more than adequate cock with which to more than adequately fuck her. And it had been a really long time since she had been satisfactorily fucked.

She looked over the partition that separated her desk from Reid’s and considered asking Mick ~~for a fuck~~ on a date just for the sake of form. To get back on the horse, as it were. After all, the bullpen scuttlebutt was that Cooper’s team was going to permanently set up shop on the west coast soon, so even if it were awful, he wouldn’t be around long enough to make it awkward. Reid must have sensed her staring and looked up with a question written across his face. She smiled quickly; mind made up, and picked up her cell, scrolling through her contacts to find Mick’s number. 

_What’s the worst that could happen? I’ll probably get a decent meal out of it at the very least…_ Her fingers flicked across the screen and pressed ‘send’ before she could give herself a chance to second guess her decision.

“Everything okay?”

“Yep.” She didn’t look up at him. “Just firming up some plans.”

“Plans with Mick?” Garcia had snuck up on her and was grinning as she squinted at Prentiss’s phone. “As if I needed more reasons to officially designate you as my real world avatar… he is _smokin’_!”

Prentiss chuckled and rolled her eyes at Garcia. Anything to avoid looking at _him_. “It’s just a date, P.” 

“Whatever. You two could spend four hours sitting through a regional spelling bee and it would be amazing just by virtue of your combined hotness. The world is starved for beauty, darling - don’t stomp all over the dreams of us lesser mortals.”

“Your enthusiasm borders on the clinically nuts.”

Garcia flipped a pink lacquered hand at her dismissing Prentiss’s opinion in favor of her own candy-coloured fantasy.

“You’re going out with Mick Rawson?”

His voice was even, disinterested, and it forced her to look at him. He seemed wrinkled and perplexed all over as if trying to match up data that didn’t quite fit into an established algorithm.

“Yes. Dinner and maybe dancing.” Garcia squealed a little behind her.

“Oh.” Reid nodded once and then stood, gathering some files and placing them in his satchel. When he was done, he grabbed his coat and looked at her again. “Good luck with that.”

He smiled and headed for the elevators in the odd rushed-yet-focused gait that he had. She wished that she could have the satisfaction of rattling him, but she knew that he was late for a meeting at the Federal Prosecutor’s office.

“I think he meant ‘have a good time’, not ‘good luck’.” Garcia said as she watched him go.

“I think that he meant exactly what he said.” Prentiss sighed. “When have you ever known him to say something that he hadn’t considered first?”


	13. Chapter 13

It was 10:47 p.m. and it had started to rain, proving the daily report from the National Weather Service for the greater D.C. area incorrect for the one hundred and forty-third time this calendar year. They had predicted light showers after midnight. 

He hoped that she had taken an umbrella with her.

He stopped in mid-step as he paced his apartment trying to work through a syllogism for his thesis argument. That was the seventeenth time that she had crept into his thoughts this evening. The average was eight instances in any twenty-four hour period unless they were working a case together. Clearly he was worried for her. This preoccupation would explain the unconnected sub-clausal fragments and dangling participles that he had found sprinkled throughout the forty-seven pages that he had managed to write before getting hung up on this damned uncooperative syllogism.

Yes, it was definitely worry and not something else.

It was good that she was dating again and hadn’t felt that she had to hide it from him for any reason. He wondered whether the awkward bar incident would have a lasting effect on their association. Hoping that it wouldn’t - but anticipating the worst - he had been working through various scenarios to overcome it when Prentiss had gone and solved it all on her own. He should have anticipated that - she wasn’t one to wait on another to act. Still, he wished that he had made the expression first if only to ease her discomfort. But, then again, it might have taken him a considerable length of time to figure out what that expression might be.

He also wished that she had better taste. Mick was like so many others and was thoroughly unremarkable. He was handsome in a standard way with above average intelligence, but his behavior indicated narcissistic tendencies and a sort of emotional ambivalence that would make him unappealing as a candidate for long-term partnership. But maybe she wasn’t looking for a pair bond, maybe it was just sex she needed. 

He blinked once and decided to get back to his syllogism. Human analytics required a different set of tools and he knew from experience that he couldn’t successfully investigate two disparate puzzles at the same time. At any rate, she could do better, and he decided to leave it at that for now.

She _could_ do better. 

He looked at the ceiling for an instant before he began pacing once again. He had to get on with his thesis. He had been dragging his feet about the whole process and it was out of character for him. He found that lately he didn’t have enough concentration for anything beyond his current caseload, as if he were distracted, unfocused…

He stopped again as a new theory came to him. Not a new theory about his thesis argument - that was still maddeningly out of his reach - but one that might resolve his lack of focus. And it might help Prentiss at the same time. He walked over to his desk and scrolled through the contacts in his phone until he found the number he sought. She’d probably forgotten that she’d given it to him; he never called her at home. He rarely called her for non-professional reasons at all. 

And she was on a date tonight.

He ran through several possible scenarios that could result from calling her at that exact moment and concluded that the twenty-seven percent chance of receiving a positive response was too dismal to contemplate. The date could have gone badly and she was home early and disappointed. The date was ongoing and she wasn’t home to receive the call. The date had culminated in retiring to Mick’s residence and she wouldn’t receive the call. The date had achieved its intended goal - sex - in which case his query was no longer valid and the call would be pointless…

He turned away from his desk and headed for his bedroom instead, turning off lights as he went. His faculties were muddled; it was best to call it a night. He laid out his suit for the next day, changed, and crawled into bed as he ran over the testimony that he would be called upon to give in the morning. He didn’t need reminding but it was soothing to run over the facts of the case: the evidence, the personality markers that led to the profile, the profile that was fleshed out by the suspect’s pathology, and the pathology that was borne out by the evidence and intensive post-arrest investigation. All aspects tied up nicely - a neat bow on an ugly act. Yes, soothing indeed, and distracting too.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. 

It was 11:17 p.m. and the rain stopped as suddenly as it began. He wondered what it felt like to be mistaken in one’s analysis so frequently and still be considered successful in one’s field. He decided that meteorologists must embody the essence of mediocrity, and that was the last thought he had before he fell asleep.


	14. Chapter 14

By the way that Reid was eyeballing the house down the block from their car, Prentiss suspected that he hadn’t been on many stakeouts before. She kept telling him that you didn’t have to watch the building _every second_ , but it apparently hadn’t sunken in. Her lips quirked a little in spite of herself; she admired his beginner’s enthusiasm.

“More coffee?” He held a thermos out in her direction without looking away from the house.

“Probably not advisable. We could be here all day and this doesn’t look like the kind of neighborhood where you could just knock on someone’s door and ask to use their bathroom, badge or not.”

He shrugged and lowered the thermos. “I can drink a lot before it comes to that. It’s something I picked up in grad school - all-night study sessions…”

“And you’re a man.” Prentiss huffed. “A tree would do in a pinch…”

His eyes flicked to hers for a second and she did a little victory dance in her mind that she forced him to lose the staring contest with the suspect’s house over a bad pee joke. Stakeout time was slow time - you took your amusement where you could find it. She hoped that they really weren’t going to be there all day.

“So, I hear from Garcia that Cooper’s team is settling in well in California. It feels a little as if the Bureau is treating the BAU like a burger franchise, but I can see the logic in having strategically located units across the country for quicker responses. How does Mick find it?”

 _Ugh, Mick_ , she thought. Thank goodness that there was very little chance of running into him again.

“I’m sure that he’s fine with it. Those former SAS types are used to moving around - it doesn’t strike me as something that would bother him.”

“That sounds like a guess. You don’t know?”

“We spoke briefly before he left.”

“Oh.” Reid was still staring at the house. “So I guess that the date didn’t go well.”

The date had been three weeks ago and Reid hadn’t mentioned it until now. There was no judgment, no curiosity on his part - just the same twitchy, affable, even-keeled Reid that she’d come to expect over the years.

“You want to talk about my date?” She couldn’t help the edge that had crept into her voice.

“Not if you don’t want to. I thought that conversation might help to pass the time.”

Damn him and his reasonableness.

“Oookaaaay… no, the date did not go well.” She huffed. “We went to dinner and he spent most of the evening waiting for breaks in conversation to drop in little sexual overtures or to remind me of how special it was that he’d continued pursuing me after I’d initially rejected him. I’m sure that he felt it was complimentary to me somehow. The narcissism was mind blowing - I think that I actually caught him checking out his reflection in the silverware.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Why? You saw it coming. Isn’t that why you wished me good luck?” She wanted to reach out and grab that sharply-defined profile and wrench it to face her. She hated his diffidence. She hated his emotional Tourette’s Syndrome that was either shockingly raw or benignly blind. 

“I thought it might be that way, but it wasn’t based on any knowledge specific to Mick. He just fit into the established paradigm, so I extrapolated from that rather than profiling him. It was more efficient and the results were just as accurate as it turns out.”

“What fucking paradigm?” She whispered. 

Maybe she shocked him by swearing - she didn’t do that often, and he never did. He turned to face her like a penitent child befuddled over an unexpected punishment. It was almost impossible to be angry with him in such a state - his confusion was completely genuine - yet she couldn’t get past how angry it made her that he could successfully profile a killer based on trace evidence, but couldn’t figure out how wildly inappropriate this conversation was.

“You’re upset.”

“What was your first clue?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that, I swear.”

“Have you profiled me? Profiled my _personal_ life, Reid?”

He looked down at his hands that were threading together in his lap, going white at the knuckles.

“It wasn’t _profiling_ \- it wasn’t as intentional as all that. It’s more… an amalgamation of anecdotal data over time. Patterns started to emerge on their own - I just began to recognize them, that’s all.”

He looked up at her briefly and must have determined that further explanation was required.

“It’s just a game that I play to pass the time. The team is made up of people with remarkably dysfunctional personal dynamics and I find that contradiction to be fascinating, okay? Our accuracy as profilers, our empathy for victims makes us the best at what we do, but not one of us can boast a healthy personal, intimate relationship. Doesn’t that make you curious, Prentiss?” 

He held up one hand and began to count off. 

“Hotch lives with the guilt of having vicariously killed Haley. Rossi is _thrice_ divorced and will most likely marry, and divorce, again before long. Morgan, the most obviously physical of all of us, lives like a monk while satisfying his need for emotional intimacy through a longstanding, unrequited affair with Garcia, who, in turn gratifies her physical needs with someone who will never have her heart. And all three are aware of this yet do nothing to change it. J.J., though ostensibly in a relationship, insisted on hiding Will from the group even past the point of obviousness, and to this day refuses his multiple marriage proposals. And then there’s you, and there’s me.”

The font of analysis dried up as suddenly as it had erupted and, eventually, Prentiss had to prod him to continue.

“ _And_ …”

“And… well,” He looked like he was trying to decided whether he should swallow something distasteful or spit it back out. “You seem drawn to strongly defined, sexually aggressive men who are also emotionally unavailable. At first, I thought this an evolution of an overdeveloped adolescent rebellion against your parents, but now I think that you choose these men because you assume that your sexual appetite will not affront them. Despite your need for sexual release, you do not engage with men often - perhaps in part because you worry about judgment passed upon your actions, or perhaps because the emotional vacuum that your partners offer you mitigates the satisfaction that you derive from the intimacy. Judgment and rejection drive you to these men but the absence of affection drives you away again. I must admit that I didn’t think about it too much until you admitted your attraction to me some time ago. I became interested in how I might fit into this paradigm.”

“How you… fit?”

“I am not sexually aggressive. My personal experiences have been random and mostly needs-driven. But some would qualify me as ‘emotionally unavailable’. Let’s face it, I’m so emotionally obtuse that I’m edging into Asperger’s territory.”

His lips twitched a little and she realized that he was trying to cover a smile. “Don’t worry - I’ve been tested. It turns out that I’m just emotionally stunted. Nothing more serious than that.”

“Reid, I never thought- ” She started.

“So, taking into account all of these factors, I assumed that you took Mick up on his offer to satisfy a physical need, since it was obvious that he wasn’t relationship material.”

“Well, _that_ didn’t even happen…” She muttered.

“Yes, perhaps because you are tired of the established paradigm.”

Irritation flooded through her but she wasn’t certain if it was directed at him or at herself. She breathed deeply and took a moment to swallow her feelings; it’s not as if he had set out to hurt her. She knew that he wasn’t capable of that as surely as she knew him to be incapable of affection for her. It was just another classic, brutal Reid analysis; the reason for his rejection at Delancy’s suddenly seemed all too obvious. She sighed and knocked her head softly against the seat back.

“Well, you know what Einstein said about repeating the same actions over and over, and expecting different results…”

“Perhaps invoking Einstein in a discussion about healthy personal relationships isn’t the wisest course…” 

He stared at her and then laughed, transforming his face into someone else’s entirely. It shocked her but it was so spontaneous that she had to join him. They let the laughter drift and fade until silence settled over the car again. They were now both watching the house for lack of anything more purposeful to do.

“I never thought that I’d end up discussing my sex life with you.”

“That makes sense. You probably felt that it was inappropriate, or that I wouldn’t understand it. Or both.”

“Probably.” She sighed, still watching the house. Her curiosity was nagging at her though. “Reid… um, how much… I mean, when did you last…”

“It’s been a while.” He said quietly. “Like I said, I look to my personal needs when they threaten to hamper my professional concentration. Sex is a biological imperative and you can only ignore it for so long without consequences. There have been partners over the years with whom I had a mutually beneficial arrangement - I think it’s called ‘friends with benefits’…”

“You mean, fuck buddies?” 

“Hmmm.” Reid nodded once. “But the last one began a serious relationship with someone that she met through work, so we had to stop sleeping together. It was distressing at first, but upon reflection it was the best decision for her. Emotionally and intellectually we were separated by a considerable amount. Besides, I get wrapped up in the work and I could never share that with someone who didn’t understand how important it is to me. That will always be the sticking point, I’m afraid - not the emotional blindness or my odd personality…”

He said it all as if reciting a quote from someone else. She suddenly imagined him _lonely_ and accepting of it as if it were his due.

“I never thought that you had Asperger’s, Reid, although I did think that you were a virgin.” She smiled, knowing that he wouldn’t take offense.

“Thank you, and I know.” His lips twitched again but his eyes remained on the house.

She reached across the center console and into his footwell to retrieve the thermos at his feet. He didn’t react as she brushed his leg with her arm.

“What about the bathroom conundrum?” He mumbled.

“I’ll live dangerously.”

She poured some coffee into her traveler mug and savored the aroma for a moment. It was strong and she realized that he hadn’t premixed it with his usual concoction of cream and pounds of sugar. He didn’t even have a sugar packet with him in the car; he was drinking it black. Perhaps there was a lot about him that she continued to assume under the guise of friendship…

“So, what do you think, Prentiss?” He murmured. “Do you want to try a different paradigm?”

She was in mid-slurp when he said it and the coffee almost came back through her nose in response. Her first instinct was to shout _What?!_ , but the coughing made that impossible. For his part, he wasn’t even looking at her. He leaned forward suddenly as his eyes narrowed with interest.

“Reid!” She sputtered.

“Prentiss…” He said quickly as he fumbled around his feet looking for something.

“What the hell, Reid?”

“Prentiss… where are the vests?”

“What?”

“The vests… _the vests_ , Emily! Our suspect just showed up!” He jabbed a finger towards the house where an SUV was now parked and a man looked around cautiously before stepping out.

Prentiss cursed under her breath and reached behind her seat for their Kevlar. She tossed one at Reid who was already half out of the car and on his cell to Hotch. Everything else faded into the background as the work took control of them both again.


	15. Chapter 15

She had been thinking about it for three weeks straight, but it wasn’t until Reid started approximating percentages and rounding decimal points during briefings that she considering doing anything about it. There was a shiver of the old fear as she raised her hand and knocked on his door. The ghost of that blonde-haired boy smirked at her from the past and told her that she’d never learn.

It was late but he let her in and didn’t seem surprised to see her there. He led her through the hall and into his living room, and then stood staring at her. His hair was more tangled than usual and he was dressed in careworn clothes that revealed his bare arms, ankles and the smallest strip of skin at his waist.

“Did I wake you?” She asked.

“No. I’ve been waiting up for you for three weeks.”

She reached for him and felt a little dizzy when he met her halfway. The ghost of her phantom tormenter bubbled away under the burn of his lips. His fingers roughly skimmed her outline; they seemed greedy as they pulled and pinched and massaged trying to get at her through her layers. One of her hands dipped under his shirt and crawled up his back producing a moan from him that almost caused her to pull away. She just couldn’t imagine him _moaning_.

She pushed back against him and he responded with a rough intensity that was at odds with everything she knew about him. His hands stepped up their attack against her clothes and he eventually freed her of her coat while a hand snaked under her shirt to cup her breast. He slowed down then, his mouth coming to rest against her neck as his fingers stroked her and clutched her to him. She got the sense that he was asking her a silent question, giving her time to change her mind if she wished. The warmth of his breath tickled up her neck until she felt his lips tease her earlobe, and then his teeth bit down gently.

She pushed him away and his hands fell, letting her go immediately. He stared at her, pupils blown with arousal, mouth flushed and open in confusion. For once she didn’t have to guess at what he was feeling - it was written in capital letters across him. He blinked away from her fighting to get his intellect back in the driver’s seat again so that he could deal with this rejection. It all happened so quickly that it shocked her as much as it had him. She stepped into his chest and took his jaw in her hand forcing him to face her. She shook her head once - _you don’t understand_ \- and pulled his shirt up over his head, tossing it away. Her hands roamed over his bare chest, moving wherever touch led them until his fingers wrapped around them and stopped her. He was staring at her in a way he never had before. He didn’t waver, or twitch, or shrink from her. It was something as essential as breathing but seemed impossible on him. When he took her mouth again, his tongue sliding against hers, she wondered what else she had mistaken about him.

His hands did battle with her clothes again and were only partially successful. It didn’t matter: he dispensed with the things that he didn’t want and left the rest. He was in that much of a hurry to get at her and she felt herself throb all over at that thought. They fell onto his sofa, the old leather commenting on every movement, every adjustment they made. He pushed through the tangle of clothes and confused limbs, and was suddenly inside her causing them both to gasp in surprise together. His hands curled inside her shirt along her back pinning her to the sofa as he started to move. She moaned and struggled to find a part of him to hold on to. His mouth pushed into hers in sympathy with his hips, and it became something warm and solid that anchored her to him. She tilted her hips, trying to draw him in and he curled his thighs under her to lift her higher. He stroked harder and faster, fists curling into her shirt until she felt the collar dig into her neck. He gasped against her skin in fits, half moaning before sinking back into her lips again. 

It was nearly impossible to move under him so she gave up trying. She ran her fingers through his hair and then yanked his mouth away from hers with a rough handful. He hissed and then gave in as her lips traveled along his jaw and down his neck to where they pressed against one another. The sofa cushions were having a full conversation now dissecting their every move as they struggled. He pushed hard again and again, clasping and straining as she fought to hook a thigh around his hip. She tightened, curling around him, and breathed out the name that she had refused to use months before. He slowed and looked down at her in shock, as if seeing her for the first time and recognizing her face and all of the connections attached to it. Then she watched as the forced civilization that he didn’t quite understand rolled away and was replaced by a terrible, deep need instead. 

He stroked a few more times roughly but never looked away from her. It was an intensity that she had only witnessed a few times before, and it had always been a part of his social mimicry; but this was something different. She couldn’t look away and instead, reached for him, holding him close enough to share his breath when he gasped into her. She twisted her hips under him and he arched into her once, and then again hard and fast as he closed his eyes and swore loudly. He rode their rhythm, accelerating with each iteration until it broke under the strain and he gave in to her body. He held her painfully close, spelling her name out in shaky halos across her neck and through her hair. She murmured against him and his hands moved along her back, absent and soothing. It took him a few minutes to come back to himself and a few more to untangle them from the mess that they had made together.

“Will you stay?” He watched her try to rearrange her clothes.

“Should I? I mean, do you want me to?”

“I’d like it. And I assure you that my bed is more comfortable than this sofa.” His diffident tone was back - as if he could take it or leave it. “I’m sorry… that was a little rushed. It’s been a while.”

“For me too - don’t worry about it.” She smiled and kissed him quickly. He wore a look that was foreign to her: complete relaxation. She could imagine him totally boneless at that moment. But then he suddenly got up. This relaxed creature that she’d never met before took her gently by the hand and led her to his bedroom, and she wondered if he could teach her to feel completely boneless.


	16. Chapter 16

Prentiss rose quietly before dawn when she realized that, despite her comfort, she wasn’t in her own bed. Reid had asked her to stay but she wasn’t sure that the invitation included an awkward morning conversation, so she got up and tried to dress as silently as possible. It wasn’t long before she heard the sheets moving in the darkness and then felt a warm hand on her side.

“The bathroom’s to the left.” He said before he brushed past her and out of the room. 

It wasn’t the reaction she was expecting. She told herself not to feel anything and continue dressing.

After she had collected her things she walked into the living room and then followed the light and noise until she found herself in his kitchen. He stood with his back to her, wearing only pants and his hair looking as if a family of angry starlings had recently abandoned it. She watched his muscles stretch as he moved around the small kitchen. He stopped suddenly and then turned, holding out an FBI emblazoned travel mug to her.

“Here, take this. It’s early but it’s still morning. You’ll need coffee.” 

His eyes met hers for a split second and then slid away. It hurt much more than she expected.

“Are you okay?” She tried to keep her voice even.

“Yes. Why?”

“You can’t look at me.”

He made an irritated growl as tension edged into his back and shoulders.

“If I stare too long, people get uncomfortable, but if I look away too quickly, they think that I’m hiding something or being deceitful.” He said through gritted teeth. “I can’t seem to find the correct balance no matter how hard I try or how long I practice for any expected situation.”

“Oh.” She suddenly felt like a jerk. “You didn’t seem to have a problem with eye contact last night…”

“That sorta happened without me thinking about it.” He was still looking at his feet.

“Look at me any way you want to, Spencer.”

At the sound of his name, his eyes locked onto hers and she had to hold herself still under that stare. It _was_ unsettling, but she’d rather have that than fleeting glimpses. He walked towards her still holding out the coffee mug.

“Thanks.” She took the mug and then collapsed under the pressure of his stare. She closed her eyes and felt her cheeks heat with disappointment.

“See? I never get it right. It makes people uncomfortable.”

“I don’t care.” She shook her head and forced herself to open her eyes. “You shouldn’t have to spend your entire life contorting yourself for other people’s comfort.”

He was silent for a moment, thinking. And then he reached for her pulling her in for a lingering kiss. She allowed herself to float in the sensation and tried not to read anything into it. When he let her go, his gaze slid away from her again.

“That’s nice of you to say, but I’ve learned that it’s much harder to put into practice. You all tolerate my oddities but you don’t understand them, and there are limits to the things that we are willing to accept without understanding.”

She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that she was different and that she _would_ understand the things that set him apart. But she wasn’t entirely sure of that and didn’t want to insult him by hedging her response. So, she let him walk her to the door and kiss her good-bye, and wondered if she’d ever get another chance to prove that she was different to him.


	17. Chapter 17

They worked and profiled and brought each other coffee and winged off to horrific crime scenes and hunted down monsters together as if nothing had changed between them. After a few weeks, Prentiss started to feel as if that night had been a shared hallucination instead of reality. She wasn’t one to wait on a man to make the next move, but this was _Reid_ and she felt very unsure of how to proceed. In the end, they were both too busy to spend much time considering the ramifications of a single night together.

One evening several weeks later, Prentiss found herself waiting for the elevator, half dead on her feet, when Reid slid up beside her silently.

“You’re here late.” He said while studying the elevator DOWN button intensely. Prentiss tried the stifle the yelp of surprise that he provoked.

“Oh, you know, the usual… enough paperwork to denude a South American rainforest and all… Do you think that anyone reads all of it? Where the hell do they _file it_?”

“With the proliferation of personal computers and the subsequent innovations in that technology, reading comprehension has decreased profoundly, not due to illiteracy, but mostly due to a general atrophy in attention spans and an increased focus on multi-tasking. Consequently, I believe it entirely plausible that as much as 67% of the reports we produce are merely _pro forma_ actions held over as a sort of institutionalized tradition. But I don’t believe that anyone has made a significant study of the phenomenon.” His eyes quickly flicked to her hands and then back to the DOWN button again. “And government paperwork is stored in various de-militarized nuclear silos in Utah. It has been since 2002.”

“Huh.” Prentiss huffed for a lack of anything else to do. Then the elevator dinged.

They entered and pressed two different floors, and then stood in silence as the elevator descended. Reid seemed unperturbed as he stared at the numbers lighting up above the elevator door, but then again it was hard to tell with him. Suddenly, the cab came to a shuddering stop between floors and they were momentarily plunged into darkness before the emergency lights switched on.

“Not again…” Reid mumbled to himself.

“ _Again?_ ”

“Morgan and I were trapped in an elevator once when we went to interview a suspect. It was an unpleasant experience for both of us.”

“Try the emergency phone.” Prentiss pointed to the call box on the elevator panel. When Reid opened it, they discovered telephone wires, but no receiver. “Great.” She whipped out her cell but had zero reception. “How long could we be stuck here?”

“It’s too annoying to calculate.” Reid was on his knees in front of the call box dismantling his cell phone.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s something Garcia told me about after the first elevator incident.” He hastily attached the telephone wires to the guts of his cell and began turning the phone on and off. “It should send an error signal to the security desk… if anyone’s watching… Hopefully, we won’t have to wait too long.” He sighed and slid down the cab wall, kicking out his legs in front of him. He waited a moment and then looked up at her. She followed his lead and sat next to him. They could be there for a while. 

After a moment, he turned and stared. “You’re waiting for me to say something, aren’t you?”

Prentiss shrugged and bit the bullet. “You’ve never mentioned the night we spent together.”

He was silent for a moment, confused. “You never came back. I assumed that you had no further interest. Or that the sex was unsatisfactory. Either way, bringing up the subject could only make us both uncomfortable. You were working very hard to keep equanimity at the office so I decided that a discussion wasn’t necessary.”

“Wait… you thought that I was unsatisfied?” She shook her head. “ _I_ was waiting to see how you reacted… the way we left it that night, I wasn’t sure that you wanted to see me again.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because of that whole ‘tolerating your oddities’ speech. It seemed as though you wanted me to go and to not feel bad about it. It felt as though you had been down that road often enough to know where it goes.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘often’, but, yes, everyone eventually leaves and it’s always for the same reason.” He was still staring at her. “That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t interested. I just wanted to be honest with you about how things usually work out with me. I like you, Emily… I’m sorry if that didn’t come across…”

“A lot of things came across that evening…” Prentiss felt her cheeks heat and looked away. “It was confusing. I think that’s part of the problem.”

She breathed out and then sat up straighter, looking him in the eye once more. “So. I’d like to see you again. Would you like that?”

“Yes.” His answer was so definite that her stomach fluttered a little.

“Good. I’d also appreciate it if you didn’t assume that I’ll eventually come to find your personality distasteful. It kinda sours the whole endeavor if you know what I mean.”

“Agreed.” His stare was becoming unmercifully intense. 

“And, Spencer?”

“Yeah?”

“I was very satisfied.”

His eyes flicked down for an instant and then back to hers again. Then he reached for her and pulled her in. His mouth was gentle, almost chaste, against hers until she grabbed a handful of his vest and pulled him into her. His mouth opened and he gasped a little when her tongue brushed his. Then his hands were framing her face and sliding into her hair as she pressed herself against him. The cab soon filled with a chorus of lips slipping over skin and staccato breathing and the rustle of clothing, and that’s how the maintenance crew found them, breathless and creased on the elevator floor making out like demented teenagers.


	18. Chapter 18

Prentiss could feel Hotch giving her the side eye stare as they both watched the screens in the surveillance van. She waited patiently for him to say something.

“You don’t think much of this plan, do you?” He said eventually.

“Does it matter what I think?” She pointed her chin to the various screens that showed a low-res image of Reid leaning against a busy bar, waiting.

“Of course it does.”

“Reid’s the right age, build and general ‘look’ of the victim profile. He was the obvious choice as bait.” She hated how that term felt in her mouth as she spoke it.

“But you’re concerned for him.” Hotch finished.

“He’s in there alone, unarmed… and he doesn’t have any undercover experience at all.” She huffed. “Plus, it’s not like he’s good at this in general.”

Hotch took a moment to collect his thoughts. “I learned long ago that Reid has considerably more depth to him then he is given credit for. He’s not deceptive by nature, but he is strategic, and he has proven to be adept at improvisation in the field as well. Plus, we’ve all seen him do that mimicry thing at Delancy’s from time to time…”

Prentiss tried not to think about the times that she had witnessed Reid pour on the charm when it was required, artificial though it may have been.

“This was _his_ idea, Prentiss. I have to trust that he knows what he’s capable of. And you should too - all of you. He’s not a kid anymore.”

“I know.” 

She sighed and watched the video feed. It was a black and white image but she knew that he was dressed in shades of grey with a purple tie. He had this weird fixation with purple accents. It made her smile thinking about how she had turned it into a private game: _Where is Spencer’s purple today?_ He looked relaxed amongst the swirl of people, waiting but not anticipating for something to happen. He didn’t even seem bothered by how many of the patrons’ gazes slid over him and instantly dismissed him as a match. It stung her and she worried it over and over like a cut in her mouth that she couldn’t resist tonguing. None of this was the Reid she knew, and both his mask and his environment’s reaction to it made her righteously indignant on his behalf. It was just ridiculous on her part. And she was also worried that, despite the S.W.A.T. team and the ten field agents on standby, they’d all miss Reid being roofied by the UnSub and he’d get himself kidnapped under their noses. It wasn’t without precedent - Reid had a murky track record with kidnapping.

Several patrons approached him and then drifted away after brief conversations. His reaction was always the same - he mimed sipping his drink and took in the scene around him with a slight smirk, as if he didn’t give a damn. Eventually, a tall blonde appeared and they settled into conversation. When, a few minutes later, she bought him a drink and he leaned forward with interest, Hotch sharpened his focus.

“All units standby. Possible contact - wait for my signal.” He murmured into the tactical mic in front of him before turning up the audio feed from Reid’s wire.

_“…not what I expected.”_

_“What were you expecting?”_ Reid said over the din of the bar.

_“Less confidence, I guess. A couple of cheesy pick-up lines maybe.”_

_“I wouldn’t insult your intelligence by trying to run a game on you. You’re beautiful, capable, and you clearly know what you’re looking for. If that’s me, I’m flattered, and I won’t mince words trying to convince you otherwise for appearance’s sake.”_

Reid leaned forward into the blonde’s personal space as one hand slowly traced her arm in ellipses.

 _“I’d like a chance to flatter you. Perhaps somewhere with more privacy…”_ Reid whispered across the mic and it made Prentiss’s blood run cold - she had never met this version of Reid before. The blonde leaned into him and the sigh she let out was more than audible over the mic even with all of the bar’s background noise.

_“I’m tempted by your offer, but when I’m through with you there won’t be anything left. Are you prepared for that?”_

“Reid said that we were looking for a woman…” Hotch murmured. 

_“I think I can handle it.”_

Reid’s hand moved to the woman’s waist and drew her up against him, his face lost in her hair.

_“I’m not sure you can, but we’ll find out.”_

The blonde’s free hand moved towards Reid’s drink and dropped something into it. Then she backed away and handed him the drink with grin. Reid smiled back and took a sip.

“That’s it.” Hotch grabbed the tactical mic. “All units go.”

S.W.A.T. did their thing with a lot of yelling and aggravated enthusiasm. The team held back until they received the all clear across the earpieces. It couldn’t have been any longer than two minutes to subdue the suspect and calm the bar patrons, but it felt like a lifetime as Prentiss waited on the curb outside the club. As soon as Hotch moved she was right in step behind him cutting through the crowd towards the bar.

“Everything okay?” Hotch asked as he strode towards Reid.

“Yep. The drink needs to be analyzed. If we can match the Rohypnol to the traces in the other victims, we won’t have to worry about whether she’ll confess or not.”

As if Hotch didn’t know that already, Prentiss thought. She knew nervous Reid behavior when she saw it - the chatter was his way of bleeding off his excess energy.

“Don’t worry - she’s going to confess.” Hotch said darkly. “Trust me.”

Reid arched an eyebrow at him but Hotch just gave him his stonewall face and went in search of an evidence tech. Then Reid turned to her with the same look. She rolled her eyes at him.

“She tried to drug and kidnap you, Reid. Hotch is gonna take her apart.”

“Oh.”

“And if he didn’t, I’d volunteer for the job.”

Reid gave her a sharp stare and she found her gaze dropping from his in self-defense. An evidence tech arrived and asked which drink needed to be collected.

“Did you drink any of that?” She asked after the tech disappeared again.

“No. There’s probably trace residue on my mouth, but not enough to have any effect.”

“Good. So, what was _that_?” She tried to keep her voice even.

“An act.” He said as he disentangled himself from his wire.

“It was… extremely convincing.”

“I’m glad. Based on our profile, I extrapolated the expected behavior aspects that should have appealed to her.”

His eyes flicked to hers casually and then he stilled letting the half-dismantled wire dangle from his hands.

“You seem disturbed by my behavior.”

“I’ve never seen you act that way before.” She dropped her voice as a pair of S.W.A.T. officers brushed past them.

“No one on the team has, but while I’m sure that they’ll be surprised by it, you appear to be reacting far more intensely.”

She picked up the end of his microphone and began to unthread it from his dress shirt. He didn’t move but she knew that he was staring at her; she hoped that the club was dark enough to hide the blush rising in her face. 

“You are worried because you’ve never seen me act that way _with you_ , aren’t you?”

“This has nothing to do-”

“That was a pantomime, Emily.” He stilled her fingers in his shirt. “It did not come naturally to me - that’s why you’ve never seen it. I thought that you would’ve understood that… such an extreme aberration in behavior is an obvious outlier, given the breadth of knowledge that you have about my personality…”

“Yes, yes I know. It was obvious, as you said.” Her fingers went to work again and snaked inside his shirt to quickly extricate the rest of the wire. He let go of her immediately but she still felt his gaze on her.

_Oh my god, Em. Put a pin in this insecure crap. This is Reid, for chrissakes._

“I’m sorry…” He started.

“Don’t be. We’re cool.” She forced a bright smile and watched as some of his confusion melted away. “You realize that Morgan’s gonna razz you about this for… well, possibly forever.”

His lips twitched slightly in what she was beginning to identify as his ‘sarcastic face’. “If it wasn’t this, it would be something else.”

He looked at her hands and then down at his shoes. “Just so long as you don’t.”

“No.” Her answer was a reflex carried forward by the surprise of his words. “No, I would never tease you about that.”

“That’s a relief.” He said softly as he collected the mic from her hands and headed outside towards the herd of FBI fleet vehicles.


	19. Chapter 19

When this all started she never intended to become Spencer Reid’s fuck buddy. The phrase itself seemed like an oxymoron. But they slept with each other - randomly at first - and then with greater frequency, and it just sort of worked out that way. In the beginning, it appeared to Prentiss that Reid was satisfying a need, as he had said. Or that it was pure curiosity. While she admired his forthrightness about it, it wounded her a little. After his profile of her ‘paradigm’, she had expected… well, maybe she had no idea what to expect. But falling into bed with another man who seemed emotionally unaffected by intimacy wasn’t it. 

She wasn’t afraid to admit to herself that she had feelings for Reid, and the pure physical satisfaction that she derived from having a regular partner didn’t bother her either. What kept her up at night was that she _still_ couldn’t read him. Some nights he seemed distracted, as if his mind was split into several directions and he was trying to give them all equal focus. But other nights, his intensity was so pointed that it disarmed and frightened her a little. She wondered if she’d even be able to tell if Reid was _feeling_ anything or not. Given how seamlessly he had proven that he could transition from his normal awkwardness to a convincing mimicry of others, she wasn’t even sure that she could trust it if she recognized it. The only thing she was sure of was herself, and she knew that if this had just been about fucking, it would have burned out long before now.

She watched him rise from her bed one night and quietly dress in the darkness.

“Spencer…” She eventually whispered. He stilled and she felt his eyes meet hers in the dark. “You need to know that I care about you.”

His silhouette shrugged. “I know that.”

“Well then, you also need to know that the longer this goes on,” She took a slow breath. “The stronger those emotions will become. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“You are concerned about my lack of emotional response.” He said flatly. “Do you wish to end this? Before you become more invested?”

“No, Spence…” She tried to keep the frustration out of her voice and only partially succeeded. His shadow remained still and silent across the room from her, waiting for whatever was coming next. “I want to know if you _feel_ anything.”

He moved forward slowly and then sat on the edge of the bed. She felt the weight of his hand press along her calf through the sheets. It moved back and forth lightly, hypnotically. “I told you once that feeling and showing feeling are two very different things.”

He was silent for a long time, just sitting on the bed stroking the curve of her leg. Eventually, he shuffled closer and she felt the warmth of his hand sweep a strand of hair from her face. “I also told you that a time would come when your tolerance for the way I am would end.” He bent suddenly and kissed her, tracing the line of her face with his finger until it came to rest on the tip of her chin. “I sincerely hope that that time hasn’t come yet.”

Then he rose and left her there, more confused than ever.


	20. Chapter 20

They were in their usual booth at Delancy’s. After much cajoling, Garcia had finally convinced Morgan to get out on the dance floor with her. He always made a big deal out of it, but the way his body straightened whenever she suggested it could only be half explained away by reluctance. Prentiss thought a lot about Reid’s analysis of his friends: that they were in an intimate emotional relationship despite their protestations. She wondered if they found it satisfying, whether it was enough for them. Then she wondered what that would be like with Reid. She had a physical connection with him, but found herself wishing for an emotional one instead. She found herself daydreaming about giving up the sex in favor of the flirtation and tenderness that Morgan and Garcia seemed to share. She blinked as the realization settled over her, and forced herself to sip her drink to banish the thought. What was she thinking? She’d gotten into to this with her eyes open; it wasn’t fair of her to expect something from Reid that he had been upfront about being unable to give to her in the first place.

She sagged back into the booth and gave herself over to half-listening to Rossi and Hotch argue over the possibility of mitigating antisocial tendencies if there wasn’t a legal ban on diagnosing children as psychopaths. They were breaking the rules, she thought as she pouted behind her Manhattan: shop talk was forbidden on team nights out.

“Would you dance with me?”

Prentiss snapped out of her sulk and realized that Reid was looking at her with his hand outstretched. She placed her drink on the table and stared at his hand as if it were a pipe bomb instead.

“Emily?”

“I thought that you were a giraffe...” She responded after a long moment.

“Is that a no?”

She felt Rossi and Hotch’s eyes fall on her as she continued to stare stupidly at Reid’s hand. He was just stubborn enough to leave it hanging there until the moment had sailed past awkward and well into embarrassment territory. She wondered whether he had done it on purpose.

“Sure. C’mon.”

She clasped his hand quickly and stood, moving to the dance floor without looking at her friends’ expressions. What did she care what they thought, and wasn’t she just fantasizing about mimicking Morgan and Garcia anyway? It wasn’t the team’s business what she and Reid got up to after hours, and they certainly weren’t on the clock right now. Still, she twisted her fingers in his grip and felt her body flush at the prospect of her co-workers watching them so closely. And she wondered why he had chosen to be demonstrative _now_ …

She picked a spot and turned to face him as he slotted his long lines against her curves. The song was slow enough to make shuffling in circles seem purposeful; it became clear that he didn’t know how to dance but his lack of ability didn’t seem to embarrass him at all. His arms closed around her and she became aware of his height and how the heat of him leaked through his clothes and into her. He stared at her as they turned, his head angled just so to add another barrier between her and the rest of the dancers. She suddenly realized that he was all that she could see, smell and touch. In the middle of a community of others, he had established an invisible boundary around her, singling her out as _taken_. An old fear snapped through her like electricity at the thought and she fought against the pain in her chest when she couldn’t catch her breath.

“Aren’t you afraid that the others will see?” She whispered, still unable to meet his eyes.

“No. I didn’t even think about that.” His tone was neutral, but soft enough that it could barely be heard above the music. “I just wanted an excuse to hold you.”

She looked at him then. His gaze was curious, as it so often was, but for the first time she thought she caught a glimpse of something else. Worry, perhaps? Was it the way his eyebrows rose for a split second, or that he opened his mouth to speak and then clamped it shut against whatever he’d decided wasn’t appropriate just then? She leaned in closer, for once not intimidated by his stare, eager to catalogue the minute changes in his expression… trying to see, to think, _to feel_ the way he did. His look changed as he read her, and she felt an unjustifiable thrill to see him blink and one corner of his mouth lift slightly.

“I can see you thinking, Emily.”

“And what do you _see_ me thinking about?” Now she was the one focusing her intensity.

“Something remarkable.” He pulled her as close as he could and hid his face in her hair. It was the first time that she’d ever managed to out-stare him.


	21. Chapter 21

Goddammit, how could he have forgotten about all of the mind-numbing paperwork involved with this job? Rossi sat back into his chair with a huff while giving his laptop a punitive shove at the same time. He hated writing - always had - even though he loved the benefits: the money, the book tours, the groupies… But paperwork was just _torture_ since there were no such enticements at the end of it to make the whole experience worthwhile. And, in typical bureaucratic fashion, the paperwork was never ending. 

He looked through his door and got a snapshot of the bullpen. Something was happening: Reid was standing by his desk staring across the rows of desks with a weird look on his face. Not that the kid didn’t always look weird, but… he was focusing pretty hard on something. Rossi lingered for a moment, amazed that the kid wasn’t twitching when suddenly his fingers began flicking against his pants as if he were practicing ‘chopsticks’. Rossi smiled to himself - _just like clockwork_ \- but then stopped when he saw one of those slightly disturbing orthodontic grins spread across the genius’s face. Reid didn’t bust those out too often. Perhaps Garcia was threatening to Photoshop Morgan again…

Rossi swiveled his chair a little to get a different angle and saw J.J. and Prentiss laughing at something on Morgan’s computer. _Yep, Garcia definitely Photoshopped something._ The women were discussing something conspiratorially, faces flushed with laughter, and not for the first time Rossi wondered how any man on this floor managed to get any work done with such beautiful women in their midst. Thank god he was too old to chase either of them, and that they’d feed him his own spleen if he ever thought about trying it. He chuckled to himself as he turned in his chair and that’s when he saw it: Reid’s expression had changed to something that came close to adoration. It was so raw and unambiguous that Rossi sat up at attention. An instant later, Reid’s eyes flicked around and the expression sunk under his normal, twitchy mask of confusion.

Rossi turned in his chair again. Who had Reid been looking at? The women were still talking. J.J. looked especially flushed… and he knew that Reid had had a little flutter for her at one point. J.J.’s phone rang and she turned away from Prentiss with an apology and headed back to her own office. Rossi looked back at Reid but his eyes didn’t follow her. They were riveted to Prentiss as she bent over Morgan’s computer and used his keyboard with an evil gleam in her eye.

_Oh no, kid. That’s gonna be a hard one to get over._

A little crush on J.J. was one thing, but Prentiss was a whole different story. And that look… it wasn’t a crush. He rubbed a hand over his face as Reid tore himself away from the distraction and started rummaging through his desk, blissfully unaware that he was being watched. Rossi remembered the night at Delancy’s when Reid had summoned enough courage to ask Prentiss to dance. He couldn’t dance worth shit and generally had the romantic instincts of a praying mantis, but Rossi had mentally given him a chuck on the shoulder for his effort. Now, his rarely summoned paternal impulse told him that maybe he ought to pull Reid aside and set him straight. Prentiss was a hell of a woman: strong, bold, complicated and gorgeous - and she was also completely out of Reid’s league. They said that intelligence was the ultimate aphrodisiac but it was going to take more than brains to convince Prentiss to take on a guy who couldn’t manage to match his own socks. 

Maybe he had misinterpreted the look; Reid was a hard guy to read at the best of times. And everyone knew that Reid and Prentiss had this weirdo friendship/protection thing going on that they were all at a loss to explain. And surely the kid was old enough now to have a few insights into the opposite sex… Yeah, he’d just keep on eye on this. It probably wouldn’t amount to anything anyway.

Decision made, Rossi turned back to his desk and his brain cell-killing paperwork. How could he have forgotten about this b.s. when he agreed to come back to the unit? He growled and thought about the bottle of thirty-year-old single malt in his bottom desk drawer. The powers that be probably wouldn’t know if he wasn’t completely sober when he wrote this crap up. He pulled out the bottle and a tumbler, and by the time he’d polished off his second glass he’d forgotten all about Reid’s puppy dog look and had convinced himself to try an air of whimsy in his latest unfinished case report.

~~~~~

Two weeks later when an entire squad room of Delaware state troopers were watching Prentiss detail the decompensation spiral of a serial arsonist, Rossi caught Reid staring at her with that same look. As before, the expression lit him for just a moment, but Rossi’s heart sank at the sight of it. Loving in vain was the cruelest of nature’s tricks, and it seemed that not even a genius was smart enough to avoid it.


	22. Chapter 22

She decided to try looking at the world differently, as he might. If she couldn’t read him with all of her profiling skills, she’d try another point of view. It was a nearly impossible task, but she attempted it anyway. She couldn’t duplicate his intellect, but realized that one of his defining features was his curiosity. He asked questions about everything because he had an insatiable appetite for new information. Asking questions was easy, but it often led to more questions, and it quickly got geometrically out of control bringing her to a standstill. How did he manage to function while synthesizing so much information at any given moment? 

She tried to hide these failures from everyone. She wasn’t really afraid of the inevitable ribbing that would ensue, but she worried that Reid might perceive it as mockery. It also became clear that the harder she tried to emulate him, the more outmatched she was, and that _was_ embarrassing. What could she offer a man that she couldn’t understand, other than the depressingly obvious, of course? For most of her adult life, she’d been in control of her relationships: she decided when a partner became too boring to bother with any longer. It was a comfortable position to be in. She had no experience with being ‘the boring one’ and she felt the familiar ground shift subtly but unmistakably beneath her.

One day in the bullpen during one of her overwhelmed instants of ‘Reid vision’, she found him staring at her. Confusion and curiosity flicking over him in rapid succession as she tried to adjust her expression to something less catastrophic. Then he stood up straight as if a sign had lit above her head with her distress conveniently spelled out for him.

“You need to shut out the noise of the details - most of them are irrelevant anyway.”

“How do you do that?” She was buried beneath the din of potentialities, and she was just _pretending_ to be like him. His life suddenly rose before her like an improbable miracle.

He shrugged and looked down at his shoes. “How do you single out one voice in a crowded room? Practice, I guess.”

“Jesus…” She mumbled and rooted around in her bag for some ibuprofen. She felt the shadow of a monster headache descending over her, not to mention the shame of being caught in the act.

“You know, no one’s ever tried that before…”

“What?” She looked up and saw his eyes flicking from his feet to her face and back again. He was shifting his weight between his feet as if he were eager to be moving, to have something safer to do.

“No one’s tried to see things the way I do.”

“Probably with good reason.” Prentiss rubbed her temple and dry swallowed two tablets. “Maybe I’m just too stupid to see the obvious flaw in this plan…”

“No, that’s not it.” He said quickly. “It’s because you want to understand, not just act like you do. It’s because you have tremendous empathy, even though you constantly try to downplay it.”

His stare was back, and for the first time she _understood_ why he did it: most of the details might be irrelevant, but he had to see them all before he could decide which ones were important. This realization filled her like light, and she felt the instantaneous assurance that she’d never be able to unsee what the brilliance had revealed to her.

“You’re marvelous, Emily.”

“You’re not angry? I mean, you don’t think it’s foolish or that I’m making fun of you?”

“Of course not.” He blinked and then cocked his head to the side to reconsider. “You aren’t, are you?”

“No!” She breathed out in relief and sagged into her office chair. Her burgeoning headache was quickly pushing all other thoughts from her brain. She rubbed her temples and willed the pills to metabolize faster. “I just… you’re right I guess: I want to understand you better.”

She opened one eye and saw him still staring at her.

“Okay, listen - I’m not good at insecurity but… I just want to know what you’re getting out of… this.” She gestured between them and then dropped her hands in case anyone saw it.

“You mean besides sex.” His voice felt absurdly loud in the bullpen. She leaned forward and tried to shush him with her eyes. Why had she decided to get into this _here_?

“Yes, besides _that_.”

He seemed confused again. “Well… you’re fascinating.”

“C’mon, Reid…”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I appreciate you looking out for my feelings, but… no. I can’t even pretend to keep up with you. It’s sort of… humiliating how uninteresting I must be to you.”

“Honestly, Emily, there are very few people who _can_ keep up with me. That’s not something I look for in an emotional relationship. I’d be waiting a long time if I did.”

 _Emotional relationship?_ Did he see them as more than fuck buddies? That statement temporarily floored her.

“Then… what do you look for?”

He stared at her for a moment. “Goodness, empathy, someone who’s challenging and surprising, a person who might help me find more of those qualities in me… You should know that even in my most temporary relationships, it has never been only about sex. That would be terribly boring.”

“But… what about ‘seeing to your needs’…”

“Yes, that plays a significant part, but if all I needed was the physical release, I could engage a prostitute.” He said it matter-of-factly, without disdain.

She just stared at him, her headache throbbing out a new unspoken question with each beat of her pulse. “No matter how hard I try, you remain mysterious to me, Reid.”

“You are just as much a mystery to me as I am to you, Emily. We’re both in the business of puzzling out mysteries, which means that this dynamic makes us very attractive to one another.”

“What happens when you figure me out?” A cold chill pierced her suddenly from her cranium down through her toes.

He suddenly smiled, a big toothy grin that made him appear more boy than man. “I don’t think that’ll ever happen.”

She forced herself to smile back. A part of her that she thought she’d buried beyond hearing suddenly whispered _He doesn’t know how right he is about you…_


	23. Chapter 23

The crime scene was an intoxicating tableau; an almost Rococo excess of coded clues and purposeful misdirection. In short, it was _perfect_. He was fortunate to get to this one while it was still so fresh. He had only experienced the four other murders through the crime scene photos, and while he had managed to reconstruct each scene meticulously in his mind so that he could walk through them, nothing compared with the real thing. This killer was theatrical but also cunning. Getting caught wasn’t high on his list of priorities; Reid suspected that the UnSub felt that he (or she… there was a sort of beauty to each scene) had plenty of time to complete his mission. He loved these kinds of cases.

“Reid… Reid?” It was Prentiss. He didn’t look up. A semi-circle of library books - two hundred and sixteen, to be precise - surrounded the latest victim. He had read many of them already, but there were still forty-seven titles that were unknown to him. He had skimmed through twelve of those forty-seven since they had arrived, a gloved hand flicking over each page as he ravaged it. Still no connection found, but he had thirty-five more to go.

“The staging is so elaborate. Much more so than the other murders.” J.J. was stating the obvious again.

“Yes, the killer is becoming more confident.” That was Hotch, playing his observations close to the vest.

“The details, the care involved - it seems personal. Maybe there’s no connection between victims but there may be a connection between the victims and the UnSub. Perhaps we-”

“That’s wrong.” Reid spoke up quickly and then gave Prentiss a flat look. It was her observation and he was a little surprised at how wide of the mark it was. She was usually much more accurate. He stared for a moment, just long enough to catch the burst of colour in her cheeks and the way her mouth tightened at the corners. He went back to the book in his hand.

“Explain.” It was Hotch again.

Reid looked up and immediately the connections from one disparate clue to another lit up before him. It was like a luminescent spider web, delicate strands coming together in clumps that defied logic as a whole, but when followed line by line, all had their own _designed_ pathway. Once he followed them all, he’d understand - they all would, but why they couldn’t deduce these strands for themselves was always a mystery to him.

“The victims are dolls. Avatars of meaning in the killer’s stage play. He lavishes care upon them because he designs everything just so - every random object, every angle, every moment we spend looking upon this has meaning for him. It’s wonderfully complicated.”

“By that logic, shouldn’t the victims be meaningful as well?” Prentiss’s voice was sharp. He looked up at her again. She was angry - why was she angry? He’d done something wrong again. What? No, there’s no time - can’t focus on parsing her emotional state _and_ assimilating the scene’s data at the same time.

“The UnSub is a masterful narcissist.” He calmed his response, willing it to be enough for now. “If the victims had a personal connection to him, the investigation would uncover that and he’d have to share the spotlight with them. That would be intolerable. This is all about him.”

Reid’s hand swept across the scene but he watched Prentiss for a reaction. From the corner of his eye, he saw Hotch nod his head, which in turn chastened Prentiss a little. Her lips thinned as she cocked a hand to her hip, drawing her coat back up over her holster. Then she dropped her eyes and turned away to talk to a local field agent.

His chest tightened unpleasantly. Watching her slowly turn away felt meaningful in it’s own way, but in a vernacular that he didn’t understand. What had he done that was so wrong? Her theory was wildly incorrect and would’ve wasted countless investigative hours if he hadn’t spoken up. Why didn’t she see that (and corollary to that question was why didn’t any of them see the narcissistic avatar aspect? He felt as if the UnSub was practically shouting at him)?

He sat back on the balls of his feet, huddled over the meticulous piles of books and focused on the linoleum tiles in front of him. This felt like an interaction in which the subtext was more important than the actual event. Perhaps he had underestimated Prentiss’s - Emily’s - growing frustration with his emotional barriers. She claimed otherwise. She even attempted to see things as he might on a regular basis. Though the effort couldn’t help but pale to his actual reality, he was profoundly moved by her impulse. It produced a sharp, warm stabbing at the center of him that should have been unpleasant and yet… wasn’t. In those moments, his fingers itched to move in her direction, to say… he didn’t know what. Every proposed expression of how he felt seemed inadequate, so he had fallen, as he always did, into not expressing much at all. It was safer, certainly, but now she was turning away and it felt like losing something. He was losing something that he couldn’t even properly name. So frustrating. None of the others had been this confusing.

Immaculately polished dress shoes appeared before him on the tiles. He looked up and saw Hotch staring down at him, his perma-scowl tinged with something softer. Unlike the rest of the team, Hotch’s scowls made perfect sense to Reid and he felt that his superior was the only person that he could reliably read. Perhaps it was Hotch’s stoic nature: alike personalities speaking the same language.

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”

Nonsense. There was nothing wrong with his hearing; he was just distracted. Wait… distracted? Didn’t this all begin as a way to _mitigate_ distraction?

“You want me to finish up here and then come up with a list of possible career fields for our UnSub. Then talk to Garcia… see what she can net in a records search.” He blinked at Hotch. “I doubt that victim profiles will help us much there.”

“Not if your avatar theory is correct, no.” Hotch stared. “It’s not wise to embarrass a colleague in public, regardless of how friendly you might consider your association.”

Reid thought for a moment. Oh. _Oh._ “I see.”

“She’ll get over it, Reid.” Hotch turned to leave. “Buy her some lunch or something.”

Was that all it would take? Would the feeling in his chest go away if he bought her a meal? Was he over thinking this - could it be that simple? He pulled his phone out of his suit jacket pocket and began typing quickly.

_\-- I’ve upset you. Didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. --_

He stared at the phone until he felt ridiculous and then went back to the book in his hand. A few minutes later his phone buzzed.

_* U R AN ASS *_

That was a bit unkind. Buzz…

_* But you are probably right. You’re always right *_

_\-- That’s not true. I’m quite often wrong about you. It’s vexing. --_

He thought for a long minute.

_\-- You vex me, Emily --_

He nodded to himself and pocketed his phone. Surely _that_ was clear, wasn’t it? He skimmed through the remainder of the book and then blew through three more before his phone buzzed again. He fished it out and smiled.

_* Well, that’s a start *_


	24. Chapter 24

Reid was talking too much, as if filling the air with words would stall any further action on the gunman’s part. Reid was good with words when he wanted to be - he could beat you to death with them - but it wasn’t working this time. He held his hands out in front of him and reasoned with such earnestness that it seemed impossible for him to fail, but then the gunman twitched and pulled the trigger. It took less time than a breath.

The sliver of Reid that she held in her peripheral vision disappeared; the extrasensory knowledge of his proximity beside her vanished. She heard the dull thud of something small tear effortlessly through fabric and the sharp exhale a split second afterwards. She stepped to the side on reflex so that she would catch the next bullet, and then she made her decision and fired. The UnSub’s head snapped back and she knew that he was dead before he hit the ground.

The scene erupted with sound. The moments preceding the shots held an eerie silence that only tunnel vision could provide, and as soon as she pulled the trigger it was as if reality wound forward faster than traveling light. The super saturation of colour and sound washed over her and made her dizzy, as if she’d crash-landed into an alternate universe. Her instincts took over - she rushed forward, knocking away the UnSub’s gun and then checking for a pulse, useless as that action was. Then she looked up and saw a wall of S.W.A.T. team outfits and the worried expression of Hotch just behind them.

“He’s gone.” She stated to no one in particular. And then she thought about Reid. She looked back to where he should have fallen but there was no one there. Pushing through the S.W.A.T. guys she bulled her way to where Reid should have been and just stared at the ground. There were a few droplets of blood in the dirt already half-absorbed by the parched earth. Her chest constricted and she couldn’t breathe. She suddenly whipped her head around, not seeing anything, and yelled, “Where is he?”

“There.” It was Hotch, his voice low and next to her ear. She followed the crisp line of his hundred dollar dress shirt as he stretched and pointed to the EMTs at a distance from the scene by the tree break. Two uniformed paramedics flanked a thin figure in a bulletproof vest. But the figure was walking. _Walking_.

She ran down the slope and didn’t care what anyone thought about it. In fact, she wasn’t really thinking at all. Her chest squeezed so sharply that her legs almost stopped working, making her stumble as she ran. She couldn’t catch her breath at all and when she found herself next to him at the back of the ambulance she was honestly surprised that she had made it that far without any oxygen.

“Reid!” She hissed and he turned, holding his arm, with a blank look that quickly melted into shock.

“Prentiss, what’s wrong?”

Hysteria almost made her laugh out loud. “What’s _wrong_? Are you serious?” She pointed to his arm and the blood seeping through his fingers where they clamped around his bicep. He followed her eyes and then looked back at her with a shrug.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.” One of the EMTs spoke up while giving Reid the long-suffering look of someone whose opinion is routinely undervalued. “It’s a through-and-through. But he’ll be fine.”

The EMT pulled Reid’s hand away and the blood from the bullet wound flowed freely for an instant before he packed it with gauze. Prentiss was riveted to the slash of colour as it slid down the arm and then spiraled around Reid’s long fingers before hesitating into drips that casually flicked to the ground beneath them. She was horrified by the carelessness of it, that the hungry earth should have a right to any part of him, and then she was enraged that everyone was so calm about it. She felt her chest squeezing her breath from her again and then felt something grasp her hand and crank until her knuckles cramped. She looked up and found Reid staring at her as if he’d never seen her before, and then she looked down and saw his hand clutching hers and that they were both turning white from the pressure.

“Emily…” He whispered a warning in her name.

She forced herself to take a huge breath and hold it. Her blood thumped in her ears. Then she let the breath out and took another. And another, and another. By the time the EMT had bandaged Reid up enough for transport, she had almost settled back into her own orbit. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from their hands, still white where they held onto each other.


	25. Chapter 25

She waited as long as she could that night at the hotel. They had an unspoken rule about keeping their distance while on the road, but she told herself that it didn’t apply _tonight_. She only had to knock once and he opened the door and ushered her inside as if he had been standing there waiting for her to break their agreement.

“What happened this afternoon?” He asked as he slid the lock home and turned to face her.

“What _happened?_ What happened is that you got shot.”

“Don’t be imperceptive, Em.” He tried to cross his arms along his bare chest and then winced as he remembered his bandaged wound. She saw that the binding around his arm was stained with brown spots: blood, but it wasn’t fresh. “You know what I’m talking about… you lost it out there today and I need to understand why.”

He was looking at her with his patented look of curiosity and confusion that was his go-to expression for so many situations. Her incredulity almost trumped her anger at him.

“How can you not understand?! How can you read suspects and victims with such accuracy and not have the vaguest idea why I was… _am_ so upset?”

“I can’t read things that I’ve never experienced, Emily.” Irritation crept into his voice for the first time. “I have never seen you _that way_ before, so just stop expecting me to guess at it and just tell me what you meant.”

“You want to know what I meant? Why I’m so upset? Here’s your answer.”

She walked up to him and squeezed his bandage until he yelped and yanked his arm away. Fresh crimson bloomed along the edges of the brown spots and he looked back at her as if she’d just pulled a gun on him.

“What the-”

“Painful, isn’t it?”

“Yes!” He yelled and cradled his arm closer.

“Now, take that pain and apply it to your entire body at once. Imagine how it would block out any rational thought, how you might find it difficult to move or breathe as a result of it. And even after the threat has passed, the sensation still throbs through you, doesn’t it? It lights up the edges of you when you move, it haunts your nerve endings because your body wants you to learn to avoid that experience again. _That’s_ what I felt as that bullet snapped past me and I heard it hit you instead.”

She stopped and closed her eyes, willing herself to calm down. She could feel one of her hands shaking at her side and she tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans to keep it from view.

“You know, I had the perfect bead on that guy today. I could’ve taken him down _and_ let him live.” She opened her eyes and stared at him. “But, instead, I killed him. And I’m not sorry I did it. He tried to take something from me… something that _I need_ … and so I paid him back by taking something from him of equal value.”

His expression had changed back to the one he’d worn as she confronted him at the ambulance earlier. He appeared utterly surprised - disbelieving - and a little bit disturbed. But then again, she had just admitted to murder for his sake. The realization settled over her then that this was probably his limit; it was clear that she felt far more than he, and that he probably thought this was dangerous. No doubt, he was right.

“I don’t care about what you think of my actions.” She continued, newly fortified by the finality of what had passed between them. “I don’t care to be absolved, and I’m not looking to leverage something out of you with it. I told you that things would escalate between us…”

“But this is part of our job, Emily. Risk is something we face every day. We cannot do our jobs effectively if we allow our emotions to rule us…”

“At least _I feel something_ about what happened today.” She spat. 

“You know that I struggle with this, Em.” His voice got low and edgy. She waved away the statement half-heartedly.

“Look at me.” He demanded and she did. He was staring so intensely that everything else blurred away into the background. “This work is everything to me, and I want to keep doing it with you. So I fight to stay professional on days like today.”

He stepped forward and grabbed her with the same white-knuckled intensity that he had at the standoff. 

“But since we’re being brutally honest, I’m glad I got shot. I knew about thirty seconds into the situation that talking wouldn’t help, but it did keep his focus and his rage on me. When I saw his decision solidify in him, I was relieved because I knew that you’d be fine. My own mortal terror paled in comparison.”

She stood under his stare and thought about the way he had gripped her hand by the ambulance. Her fingers had ached afterwards. He was holding her the same way now.

“I _cannot_ show this in public because I _need_ the work. You are now inextricably tied to that and it makes my feelings about what I do so much more… complicated. I once told you that my work trumps all other relationships… well, I don’t know what to do now that my work has _become_ a relationship.”

“I’m sorry.” She said quietly. “I didn’t know any of this. When you don’t express things or talk about them-”

“What’s been going on here,” He gripped her even harder, which she didn’t think was possible. “What happened today is so far outside of my realm of experience that I feel helpless. Conversation is a sophisticated, learned behaviour - how can I talk about it when I cannot even comprehend the concept first?”

She was beginning to feel a little helpless under the sway of him. For someone who unabashedly laid claim to the concept of emotional obtuseness, he could exert such a mood-altering influence when he chose that she often felt overwhelmed. Something exciting and dangerous tickled the edges of her consciousness at the thought that she might overwhelm him too, that he actually possessed a deep well of feeling that had just gone unnoticed in the past. The whole thing seemed improbable, and he had been clear about that, but in the space of thirty seconds the possibility had suddenly sprung into existence. She wanted it to be real, but even now he still appeared like a giant question mark to her.

“Maybe you can’t tell me.” She had her doubts about that, but that was an argument for another time. She looked to where he held a death grip on her arm. “But… can you show me?”

His hand left her arm and slid up and into her hair as he pulled her in. He seemed breathless even before his lips brushed hers and it made her body crackle with nervous energy all over. His grip was tight but his lips were gentle, tentative, as he asked her an unspoken question. She answered, curling into his bare chest and opening up to him as he pulled her closer. He licked the edge of her lip, drawing her in slowly, sinking in deep when she offered herself to him, as if engaged in a delicate conversation. He pulled away softly and she thought that he whispered ‘Yes’ as he did so. He brushed kisses along the edge of her mouth, her temple, her earlobe, and into her hair. With each kiss, he repeated the word.

“Yes?” She breathed as she arched up on her toes to get as close to him as possible.

“Yes, I can show you now.” He found her mouth again and didn’t let her go until she moaned. “Sometimes, I… want to show you so much…”

“But?” She whispered against his neck and felt him shiver. He took a moment to answer.

“I try very hard, every day. Just for you, Em.”

She pulled away and took his face in her hands. “I told you that you shouldn’t have to conform to everyone else. That includes me, even if I can’t see that myself in the moment.”

“But you need this - appropriate emotional demonstrations, I mean.” He said without missing a beat.

“Yes, but I also need you to be you. It’s no good pretending to be something you’re not.”

“What if I’m not pretending? What if I need this too, even if the need is completely new to me?”

Her breath caught in her throat. “ _Do_ you need this?”

“Yes, Emily.” He was so still beneath her hands, waiting, always waiting for her.

“Can you tell me what you need right now, in this instant?”

His eyes held hers almost to the point of painful awkwardness, and then they slowly roamed down her lingering at the places were they held each other. He took one step back, then another, and let his arms fall away. She almost followed him, wanting the connection back, but knew that what he was doing was purposeful. It was her turn to wait for him.

“Take off your clothes.” He said quietly.

She did as she was told, with great deliberation. She watched him as she discarded each item and found that while his gaze flicked all over her, in general, he mostly observed her expressions and her hands. It confused her until she considered that emotional context might seem more exotic to him than a naked body; sex was something he appeared to understand, but emotions puzzled him. Perhaps her face was more open than she intended because he suddenly smiled at her as she tossed her bra away and stood naked before him.

“I can see you thinking.” He murmured.

“And?”

“It’s arousing. I like that, sometimes, I’m able to understand you _without_ explanation. I wonder what that would be like all the time…”

“Probably a lot less private.” She smiled back. “What now?”

“Come here and take my clothes off.”

He didn’t have much on to begin with, just pants and boxers, but she took her time anyway. He was already hard and she exaggerated the delicacy required to move his clothing around his cock. As she slid his clothes down his calves, she brushed him lightly with her breast. He breathed audibly through his teeth and she smiled as she rose and pressed herself along the length of him.

“Better?”

He nodded.

“And so?”

He took a moment and outlined the arch of her neck from shoulder to jaw with his breath. She shivered when his lips brushed the crescent of her ear.

“Lie down on the bed, please.”

She did as she was told and swallowed down the way being on passive display irritated her. A small smile curved his lips as he kneeled at the bottom of the bed and watched her.

“Thank you.” He whispered, and she smiled and rolled her eyes when she realized that he had read her irritation. _Profiler…_

She was about to say something scathing when she felt the warmth of his palm curve around her right heel. His other hand grasped her left ankle and gently nudged her legs apart as he settled on his thighs between them.

“Straight to the heart of the matter then?” She breathed.

“Hardly.”

His fingers began to trace the curves of her ankles and calves in light, slow ellipses. She let out a long sigh and let her head fall back; this was something that she secretly enjoyed about him. When they were alone together, he was remarkably tactile - so much so that it made his daytime haphephobia all the more confusing. He could get lost in tracing intricate designs across her skin, or stroking out a strand of her hair, and, though it had never done much for her in the past, she found herself falling for this hypnosis whenever he used it. 

She was also amazed at how warm he always seemed to her. She imagined that someone as tall and skinny as Reid might have circulation issues, but his touch was never anything less than comfortable. As his hands skimmed around her calves, he felt hotter than usual, but she decided that it was a trick of biochemistry that left her tingling along the paths of his fingers. When his palms curved to the backs of her knees tracing lazy circles there with his index fingers, she caught herself panting audibly. Clamping her mouth shut, she wondered why this had never worked with anyone else. He still wore the strange half-smile that brought out some of the lines she loved in his face.

“Hey. What are you thinking?”

“That I wish it could always be like this.” He watched her as his hands shifted and she felt their warmth tickle the inside of her thighs. “We never seem confused when we’re in bed. It just feels… honest.”

“Yeah.” She shuddered as his thumbs began to slowly circle their way upward. “You said once that these moments happen without a lot of thinking. Maybe that’s why we aren’t confused - sex can be a little mindless…”

“No.” He leaned forward and placed his lips just below her belly button, leaving a wet kiss in his wake. “I don’t think that’s it. For example, my body is screaming at me to pin you to this bed and take you without restraint or finesse - all other considerations be damned. It’s remarkably hard to block out, but my mind is managing to do it because it knows that it’ll be worth it if I wait.”

A pulse thrummed through her body at his words until she gasped. His thumbs where at her mid-thighs and suddenly his slow approach felt maddeningly slow. Her gaze flicked down to see him flushed and hard where he rested against one of his own thighs. He was leaking against himself and the bed sheets in anticipation, and her pulse throbbed through her again. It was painful this time.

“Wait for what?” It came out more irritated than she had intended.

“It’ll be so much better if I show you what it means to me first.” His hands spread her a little wider and then he bent his head to kiss the crook between her thigh and pelvis. She hummed against her better judgment when he followed the chaste kiss with a flick of his tongue. “You _need_ to know… I need to show you…”

“Hmmm, can you show me a little quicker?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” He chuckled into her skin and it felt like a jolt of static electricity. “I refuse to be mindless.”

She was pretty sure that she could get him to a state that would disprove his assertion, but for now, he was in the driver’s seat and it was searing her all over that he wasn’t moving faster. 

“Please…” She whispered, not afraid to plead a little with him.

She felt him smile against her for an instant before he moved and settled between her thighs. When she felt his tongue again, this time outlining the raw center of her, she jackknifed with a yelp and fell gracelessly back into the mattress. Her throbbing was starting to come in waves, slowly at first in eagerness of wherever he would go next. He waited a second until she calmed under his hands, and then he outlined her again, with more pressure this time. She arched her back off the bed and bit her lip. This was crazy - she was already far too sensitive for teasing. Heat was streaking up along her legs and down her torso leaving her cold and abandoned except where his hands and mouth were focusing her energy. She tried to wriggle closer to him, but he placed one hand along her hip and one against her thigh effectively holding her exactly where he wanted her. She released a frustrated, complicated noise at his actions.

“So impatient.” He murmured against her, which made her arch into him again. “We both need it this way - you’ll see.”

He circled her with just the tip of his tongue until the cascade of shivers it sent to her nerve endings caused her to grip the bed sheets tight enough that she heard the distinct pop of them coming free from one of their hospital corners. The pulsing waves had centered under her belly, radiating out in grander circles with every move he made. She closed her eyes and imagined the sensation of her climax as a colour against the blackness of her eyelids: it undulated and transitioned from evening indigo to sunrise orange with enough intensity to convince her skin that she was experiencing temperature changes to match the images. As the sensations crashed over her faster and faster, she lost her grip on what was real and what she imagined. 

His name burst out of her, randomly like gunfire, as he persisted with his tongue and eased her shaking with sure strokes of his hands. Then his fingers bit into her thighs and pressed her firmly into the mattress as he sunk lower. His tongue slipped into her and she swore loudly. He tried again and her hands abandoned the sheets and dove into his hair yanking handfuls as he tried to keep her still. He gave in with a hiss and she eased up when she felt his lips brush her inner thigh instead. 

“Too much?” He whispered.

“Yes.”

“Sorry.”

“No… it’s just…” Her whole frame ached with a flash of heat that had nothing to do with him - he’d started something, but her body had taken it over, proceeding on its own timetable. “I want _you_ , not your tongue…”

For the first time, she heard him voice his own frustration and it made her laugh out loud. She looked down at him and saw him bury his face into her thigh as one hand disappeared and stroked himself roughly. He groaned against her skin and she let her hands fall into his hair again, this time massaging him in sympathy.

“Is mutual torment part of your plan?” She swallowed hard as she watched his arm flex while he worked himself. A glistening thread fell from him to the bed sheets bunched between his knees and he pushed his face harder into her thigh. He was moaning and seemed lost in himself - she had a shaky moment when she wondered if this had anything to do with her at all.

“Spencer…” She cradled the tangles at the back of his head, and then his gaze locked on hers as he slid up her body and crashed into her lips. He pulled on her with his mouth and his teeth, transitioning so suddenly from playful to frantic that it took her breath away. This was him all over, she realized as he gasped against her and she arched up into him hoping to calm him with her nearness; he was either distracted or so completely focused as to make you believe that no one else existed. She understood that he struggled with appropriateness but now she saw his fervor in bed in a new light: what if it was a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable? He always thought that she’d eventually grow tired of him…

“Hey, I’m right here.” She held his face and directed it gently back so that she could make eye contact. “You’re not losing me, Spence. I promise you. Just _be_ with me, okay? That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

That stopped him. He let his body sink into hers and she felt him hard and tight against her belly, but he just stared at her wordlessly. She traced the contours of his face with her fingers and eventually he raised his own hand to do the same to her. She felt him pulse against her - his chest, his abdomen, his cock and thighs - but he remained still except for the movement of his hand. Its simplicity went straight to her belly and banked the coiled heat that lay there, waiting. Part of her wanted him to finish what he’d started, but another part of her told her to hold on - this was something that wouldn’t come again and he was right - it would be worth the wait.

“I need you to know… not just understand…” He said it so quietly that if she hadn’t seen his lips move, she could have convinced herself that she’d imagined it.

“I do. After today, I really do.” She smiled and held him, trying to push out a force of assurance to him from every part of her.

He leaned down and kissed her - just the barest of kisses. “Things change because they have to. It’s a fundamental law of existence. But… it’s not always easy to predict _how_ things will change…”

She was certain that this made sense to him, but, not for the first time, she wished that he were slightly less clever than he was. 

“Today, things changed.” He concluded, and even if she wasn’t entirely sure of his point, she had to admit that _that_ was true enough. That bullet had slipped through space, torn through him, and irrevocably altered her.

She arched up from the splay of pillows and kissed him. He hesitated a little and then opened up to her, moaning as her nails scratched the nape of his neck to draw him closer. She moved her mouth against his, forming words that she didn’t trust to say aloud - words that would tell him how things had changed _for her_ , but that he may not understand. She wasn’t ready for his look of confusion again, but she _had_ to tell him nonetheless. She felt him tighten in response, preparing to pull away because he didn’t know how to react. She couldn’t risk that. Her hand slid between them and circled around his cock instead. He groaned and twitched against her as she smoothed her palm over and around him and he began to pulse against her grip. She let him get the idea, and then she guided him lower to where she wanted him. He slipped against her letting momentum lead him more than conscious effort. When he slid shallowly into her and stopped, he kissed her deeply holding himself in place as he did so.

“Spencer, I need this.”

“I know.” He pushed into her fully then and let her catch up when she gasped under him. “I know, and now I finally understand it as well. Makes it better…”

He moved in her, across her heated skin, as if by magnetism; being drawn into her and then suddenly repelled when he got too close. Her hands clumsily skittered along his sides, momentarily pausing to feel the stretch and tension of his muscles moving as they tried to synchronize their bodies. Her fingers tripped along the flat of his back, delighting in the half curves it made to arch into her, and then she sunk them into his hips and added force to his momentum. She leaned her back up and away from the bed as much as she could and then breathed his name into his shoulder before taking a slow, succulent bite.

He seemed to pick up the pace as he sensed her mood shift; now he was stroking her hard enough to make the bed complain. To feel the length of him move, from shallow to deep, over and over, made her want to struggle against him. The increasing pressure was winding her up again, tightening the coil just below her belly that he had already charged and primed. Her hands clasped up along his back, his muscles rolling under the movement, and his hips canting into her as he buried himself. He dropped his head low between his shoulders as he labored now; his hair was a mess from her hands, damp at the temples from effort. He was moaning with each pass, getting louder as they progressed. The sound, the feel of him… she was curling around him trying to still him _and_ force him to do more at once. She just needed more…

“Wait a sec…” She gasped, and he immediately stopped in mid stroke, eyes wide and locked on hers.

“What is it?”

“I need… more of you…”

She wrestled beneath him until she freed her legs. She pushed back on his forearms until he rose back and balanced his weight on his thighs. Folding her legs up between his chest and hers, she reached back and pulled him down into her again.

“The added pressure…” She whispered but couldn’t finish her thought as he began stroking again.

“Yes…” He gulped. “Good… better than before…”

It was better. She felt full enough to burst each time he buried himself in her, and then felt the loss as he withdrew. She didn’t think it possible that she could get wound up again so quickly, but excitement was snaking under her belly and out along her thighs like electricity snapping where they connected. He moaned her name into her neck and the sound made her tighten so dramatically that he started crying out her name as he picked up speed.

“S-spence…” She tried to warn him with her voice, but the whole bed frame was making noise now, so the point she was trying to make was becoming moot.

He reared back at the sound of his name and bored his stare into her as he attempted to keep his pace going. It was intimidating to say the least, but it wasn’t the first time she’d withstood it. Something happened to him when she did it, so she tried again and said his name to his face. His stare crumpled as one arm slipped beneath her and pulled her up into a searching kiss. Her legs slid down to cage his waist as he kept moving shallowly in her, but the kiss had become everything. His mouth slipped against hers, like some desperate attempt at a language that wasn’t fully understood by either of them. There was something perilous in it, an all or nothing message that needed to be heard, but when he broke away with a gasp the only thing that came out of him was her name again on broken breath. Her stomach dropped, and the electricity snapping under her skin seemed to act as if it were controlled by his voice. Perhaps the effect it had on him had become powerfully reflected back onto her. Prentiss’s focus was narrowing to the heat of where they connected, but that connection throbbed intensely whenever they slowed down to recognize it.

She cinched handfuls of him and pulled herself flush against his chest. He felt fevered everywhere they touched, and as she pulled away from his mouth and fell into his neck, she tasted the salt of him. Momentarily, her senses became confused as the impulse filled her with a need to consume him. She left wet halos across him as she moved down his neck and licked the hollow between his collarbones. The tang of him went straight to her center and he groaned when she tightened and he struggled to keep his rhythm.

“Spence… your taste…” She sighed into his chest.

“Huh?”

“You taste… amazing… sounds crazy, but trust me…”

“Not crazy.” He pulled her up higher on his waist and gave himself a new angle on her lips. “Biological. We have to… feel great… smell great… taste great… it’s how we know.”

“Know what?” She swept her tongue against his and found a lingering note of herself there.

“That we’re with the right one.” He breathed into her mouth.

Her whole body seemed to break out into a sweat as he said it, as if they were thrashing around in a midsummer heat wave. She felt herself tighten and flex around him in crests beyond her control, and then she leaned back balancing on one arm to give them a sharper angle. He didn’t let her go far though, as he followed her and then dipped his head to lick her from breast to earlobe in one swift curve.

“You taste fantastic too.”

“Oh…” She dropped her head back and gave him her neck. When she felt his mouth there, she began to laugh in a way that matched how her whole body was pulsing around him. “ _Spencer…_ ”

He laid her back and started slamming into her again, seeming a little out of control in the process. She closed her eyes as she tried to deal with how her traitorous body had suddenly overwhelmed her with feeling and left him to whatever was driving him. 

The headboard was making an unmistakable sound against the wall and she felt herself blush as she spent a split second imagining what the neighbors thought of it. She rolled her hips around him, and suddenly choked as he drove home at the right moment; her pulse became a boom that rippled through her until she could feel it tingling in her fingertips. She cried out and stilled as her whole focus centered on that one point in space, waiting. He hit the same spot again, and again, and again, asking her with his body what she was holding on to. She opened her eyes and watched as he arched into her - damp hair swinging in front of him as he gasped and flexed. He was completely lost in the feeling between them - what only they could make together - and, as she thought that, she was gone. 

The energy that had coiled in her now shot out in a dozen directions at once. She sunk down under it and then randomly broke its surface as she pulsed around Reid. She felt his rhythm jerk, his chest collapse against hers, and his arms crank around her until pain broke through her haze of pleasure. He choked out her name and seized around her, forming some sort of protective cocoon as they rode the feeling out. When they came to rest, all that she could feel were their chests pressing against each other in turn. The ache there was tremendous and she tried to breathe shallowly in an attempt to slow her heart. 

Something tickled her face and she opened her eyes to find his fingers turning her towards him. He was half propped up, breathing like he’d hit a runner’s wall, and staring in that relaxed way that he only did when they were alone together. It was such a rare expression on him; she smiled to see it. He slid his hand along her jaw and slowly drew her close. Their lips brushed, then pressed, and then gently pulled each other in. It didn’t help them catch their breath, but Prentiss loved the feel of them getting lost in each other all over again. They explored in this soft way for long enough that she lost track of time. When he eventually pulled away, with a kiss of apology at the corner of her mouth, she felt disoriented, as if she had been missing for days.

“I’m sorry about today - for scaring you.” He whispered. “Are we going to be able to work this out? The being able to function in dangerous situations thing…”

She shrugged in his arms. “I don’t know the answer to that yet. But I hope so.”

He stared for a while before he spoke again. “You know, no one has ever come this far with me before.”

She was struck again by how matter-of-fact he was about his solitude. It broke her open in a new way. How could anyone get accustomed to such loneliness?

“You have no idea what that means to me.” He finished as he pulled her into his chest and let out a sigh. She held onto him and listened to him breathe until she knew that he had dozed off. Only then did she allow herself to press against him fully knowing that he wouldn’t feel the frantic beat of her heart.


	26. Chapter 26

Her body felt dawn coming long before it actually happened. Everything in her screamed to stay where she was, wrapped in the tangled mess of his arms and the bedclothes. At that moment she didn’t care if she ever got up again, but they weren’t in the safety of D.C., and their boss was an early riser. She tried to wiggle free of Reid several times, but he always realigned himself and pulled her back into him. When she finally gave into the reality of making a break back to her hotel room, she even heard a muffled ‘No’ as he tried to reel her back in.

“I’ve got to, Spencer.” She whispered as she left the bed and fumbled around the darkened room for her clothes.

“Humph.” 

The shadow in the bed made an irritated noise that forced her to smile but tore at her at the same time. Something had changed last night, but she couldn’t put a name on it. She only hoped that Reid recognized it too. She dressed and then stood dumbly at the foot of the bed. It was awkward; it wouldn’t feel real until one of them made a declarative statement about it. She saw the silhouette of him leaning up on his elbows and with his hair in the most imaginative configuration of crazy to date, possibly waiting for the same thing.

“I don’t know what to say.” She shrugged and decided to go with honesty.

“Then don’t say anything.” His voice was calm. “Just promise me that you won’t forget anything that was said here, or what happened between us last night. You know that I won’t.”

 _Okay, so things have changed._ She nodded slowly. “I can do that.”

He didn’t say anything else but he also didn’t move and she knew that he was staring at her. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she was curious to know if there was something new in that stare. Since she was to be denied that answer, she turned away and quietly let herself out into the motel hallway. Her footfalls sounded monstrous to her ears but she made it back to her own room without disturbing a single soul. She leaned back against the door as she closed it and let out a breath that she’d felt she’d been holding for months. Her body shook with its release. Perhaps last night had been the moment that Reid had decided to fall in love with her.


	27. Chapter 27

“Didn’t get any sleep last night, huh?”

Reid’s head shot up at the voice. He thought that he had been alone in the elevator and then became distracted by the preliminary autopsy report on the UnSub that had been slipped under his door before dawn. He had methylenedioxypyrovalerone in his system, which meant that he might have been hallucinating badly when he died. They hadn’t profiled drug use at all. Interesting. But Rossi was doing the half-smirk thing that Reid found confusing because it could mean a half dozen disparate emotional states and that was distracting.

“I got some.”

Rossi’s smirk turned into a paternal snort. “I know that you didn’t, Reid. I’m in the room next to you and the walls ain’t that thick.”

Something cold and sharp squeezed Reid’s chest, like the time when his mom caught him masturbating and had just walked away with only a look of disappointment on her face. He rubbed his bandaged arm to soothe away the memory and hoped that Rossi followed his mother’s example.

“Hey, don’t get me wrong - I’m impressed, especially given that you were shot yesterday and everything… though maybe that explains your fervor and your reasoning…”

“Reasoning?”

“Listen, you didn’t want to send the wrong message to that waitress, right? What was her name… Aurora?”

Reid nodded.

“I totally understand the need to deal with a traumatic event with… well, with a heightened sense of passion, let’s say. I’m relieved that you’re capable of it, to be honest. And given my personal history, I can’t pass judgment on it. But, considering what I heard last night…”

Reid felt his face heat and it got worse when Rossi closed the distance between them in the elevator.

“…you may have _implied_ more than you intended to your bedmate.”

Rossi let a long beat hang between them before he leaned in and arched a knowing eyebrow. “ _Whoever_ she was.”

Reid knew he should say something. He thought that the socially accepted response would be emphatic denial followed by umbrage, but neither of those would look natural on him. He was also concerned for Prentiss; Rossi might already suspect her, but Reid didn’t want to confirm anything. Additionally, he hadn’t considered that the effect of his shooting could have intensified his reaction to Emily. What if Rossi was correct? What if the emotions he was feeling were just temporary? It didn’t seem that way to him, but Rossi certainly had a wealth of experience that he lacked… As was his usual practice in such situations, he held a blank expression and remained silent. 

“Just be careful, kiddo, okay?” Rossi’s expression softened. “Take it from a guy who knows: some things aren’t fixable if you break them, and that kinda regret lives with you for a long time.”

“I’m not sure how to respond to this.” At least that was an honest answer.

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open onto the hotel lobby. Rossi smiled and clapped Reid on the shoulder. “You don’t need to respond - it’s just food for thought. Now let’s go find the others and get some _actual_ food. I’m starved…”


	28. Chapter 28

She was surprised to receive his text so early in the evening. They usually met up somewhere and then went back to his place - it was odd that he wanted her to come to his apartment out of the blue. He was a creature of habit and rarely called her over to socialize - unless it was a straight-up booty call, but there hadn’t been many of those in the weeks since he’d been shot. She considered that as she climbed the stairs to his floor; it would appear that their epiphany hadn’t lived and died in that hotel room. He was different, more attentive (by his skewed standards anyway), and her fear that this was all just something she had invented in her mind had subsided a little. When she knocked, he answered quickly as if he’d been standing at the door waiting for her, and he ushered her in with a twitchy wave and an averted glance. The fears that she had just put away crept back in again.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” He mumbled and gestured vaguely towards his couch. He had a length of purple thread wound through his fingers in an intricate tangle. He’d pulled it tight so that it left white marks where it bit into his skin.

“Are you okay?” She sat and waited until she caught his eye, then nodded towards his fingers.

“I will be soon. I hope.”

“Well, that’s not an ominous conversation opener at all.”

He looked at her in alarm and she smiled, then he ducked his head and sunk down onto the couch next to her nodding that he ‘got it’. He ‘got’ things much quicker, she’d noticed, and it didn’t seem to be as much of an effort as it once was for him. She didn’t feel as though she could take the credit for it, but it warmed her every time she saw it. He stretched his social boundaries _for her_ and it was hard not to find that flattering.

“I have something for you, but before I give it to you I think that I need to explain a few things.”

“Okay…”

She forced herself not to touch him, even when she saw the string tighten around his fingers from the corner of her eye.

“There are things I can handle - actions and behaviors that I’m comfortable with or have adjusted to over time - like being a part of a team or dealing with the way Garcia insists on hugging me.”

Prentiss smiled: Garcia just didn’t give a damn about his physical boundaries. It was sort of endearing.

“And there are things that are confusing or awkward for me. As I grow older, these things don’t bother me as they once did - I have come to understand that change is an immutable element of existence and I can incorporate change when it is obvious and important that I do so.”

Her stomach knotted and her breathing grew shallow. She wanted to tell him to stop being so clinical in his analysis - he always fell back on that when he was uncomfortable. She knew for a fact that he was far more emotional than his persona admitted to the world, and she bristled when he tried to deny that fact.

“And there are still other things that I cannot handle at all.” He continued. “When I am confronted by them, I come back here because… this is the only place where I can be myself. I don’t have any hesitation or doubt within these walls. No one’s watching me, or passing judgment… I am completely safe. It doesn’t look like much, but I need this place in order to function. The rules of my world have to exist somewhere and they exist here in a place where they bother no one and yet still ground me so that I can go out and handle the rules of everyone else’s world. Does… does that make sense to you?”

“I think so, yes.” She murmured as she tried to ignore her pulse hammering against her temples. “You’ve made this place into a sanctuary. We all need one - everyone wants to feel safe.”

“Exactly. It’s rare that I invite people in… there are exceptions, of course.” He nodded to her but didn’t give her time to respond. “But generally, I don’t feel as secure when others are present.”

Despite prefacing this conversation with an element of anticipation, Prentiss was getting a sense that he was working up to pushing her away and she had no idea why. “Are you saying… do you want me to go?”

“No.” His gaze met hers with a genuine look of confusion, which frustrated her even further. “I- no, not at all. This… this is aggravating… I think I’m doing this wrong…”

“Doing _what_ wrong, Spencer?”

He quickly unlaced the string from his fingers, grabbed her hand, and pressed the string and the old metal key attached to it into her palm. She stared at the embossed ‘SCHLAGE’ at its base in wonder, although it was very obviously a door key. She rolled the key over once and then looked up at him.

“What are you asking with this?”

“Nothing.” He shrugged and then straightened his back with effort and forced himself to stare at her. “I’m telling you that I need this place in order to be content, and… you’re a part of that contentment… so you should have the freedom and encouragement to come and go as you please. Hence, the key. I’m… I’m hoping that you will feel safe here too.”

She stared back at him, ungraciously and unmoving, as she tried to find something to say. It’s not every day that someone offers you the keys to his world - literally. She couldn’t begin to imagine what sort of global shift had taken place in Reid to prompt him to let her in _to stay_ when he had all but said that his world was private. He was watching her face in that unrelenting way that got to her so quickly, and she found herself shifting where she sat as she tried to break his mesmerism. She folded her fingers over the key and then placed the clutched hand over his on his leg. His eyes left hers and followed the hidden key. His mouth turned down at the corners.

“Are you sure? Absolutely sure?” She whispered. Her fingers reached up of their own accord and drew a strand of his hair away from his face. It brought his gaze back to hers again with renewed intensity.

“Yes.”

His fingers hesitantly mimicked hers. They skimmed over her skin, across her cheeks and up around her brow. He seemed to get lost in it for a moment, becoming ensorcelled as he watched his fingertips outline hidden paths along her shapes until, at last, they came to rest lightly across her lips. They held still for an instant before moving under her chin, and then gently pulled her forward until their lips brushed. She sighed into him, her hand with the key still pressing down against his. No matter how confusing and intense he could be with her, she couldn’t deny that he also made her feel safe, treasured…

“So, how does this work?” She asked against the corner of his mouth.

“However you want. Stay when you want, go when you have to… just let me know one way or the other so that I won’t… worry. I would like you to look at this place as another home, but there are no strings on my offer.”

“Well, there’s quite literally a string attached to this key.” She smiled as he buried his hands in her hair.

“Now who’s being obtuse?” He kissed her so deeply that she was glad that they were sitting down. She wondered how she would adjust to seeing more of a man who appeared to feel so much yet showed so little, she wondered if the dichotomy would tear her apart. “So, not such a bad conversation, right?”

“You do have a certain… suspense to your requests that would give a more anxious woman pause.”

“Hmmm. I’ll try and work on that.” He kissed her again, lightly, and then pulled back to watch her. “I didn’t have a template for this discussion, and someone had recently suggested that my perception of personal matters might be compromised, so… I guess I was more nervous than I would like.”

“Someone?”

He waved the question away. “It was a random conversation. I took my time to consider the advice and then discounted it.”

“Why?”

“Because the anticipation of this moment outweighed all other considerations. Even my fears.”

He pulled her in and his arms tightened around her as if she’d disappear. _So, now you’re in the relationship you wanted with the man you wanted. What are the odds?_ She wrapped her arms around Reid, pressing the key between her palm and his back as she squeezed. He wasn’t the only one who was afraid that this would disappear.


	29. Chapter 29

He woke because his toes were cold. Below freezing wasn’t normal for November in D.C. but climate change was making the ‘new normal’ a little unpredictable. Whether it was his landlord’s miserliness or the boiler’s failure, there was no heat in his apartment yet. He looked blearily to the studio windows in the early dawn light and saw frost edging the panes, but he couldn’t tell if it was on the inside or outside. 

He tugged at the blankets and tried to cover his feet when arms encircled him and warmth zapped up his body. Her lips murmured something against his neck that he didn’t catch, and after a moment of worrying confusion, he went limp in her embrace at the revelation that neither one of them had anywhere more pressing to be.

He whispered her name into her hair, just to make her real and solid in his mind, and he felt himself go hard against her hip. It wasn’t because he wanted her - well, not _entirely_ \- but it was a sort of terrible frisson of excitement that overtook his mind.

_She doesn’t have to leave. Maybe… she’ll never leave._

His hands blindly directed her lips to his and he kissed her as if it were the last time. She moaned and pulled the blankets tightly around them as they moved together, half awake and trying to remain in the warm patches of the bed. The old wood bed frame creaked at odd intervals as they breathed one another in, and rolled, and pressed back into the haphazard scattering of pillows. Eventually, the blankets betrayed them and Prentiss’s leg was bared to polar temperature of the bedroom.

“Jesus! It’s cold in here…” She broke away from his lips with a gasp.

“I bought space heaters last winter. I can get them-”

“Don’t you dare get out of this bed. It’s way too early and cold for you to leave me just yet.”

She was smiling at him, her expression softened by humor and general sleepiness. His memory was both a blessing and a curse, but at that moment he was entirely grateful that his mind would always be able to recall this snapshot of happiness. That’s what he’d finally categorized it as - not like the enjoyment that he got from a thrilling case or the slightly awkward warmth that he felt for the team. It boiled up in him suddenly, spilling over his edges scalding him with its heat and leaving him with a perfect understanding of the feeling. If only he could explain it to her - show her how it moved him other than by pulling her under him and making love to her until they both went limp. It was so much more to him than that but he was utterly ill equipped to display it. He had no tools for articulating the terrible, basic longing that she brought out in him.

“I’d come back.” He whispered shakily. “I’d always come back.”

“Of course you would.” She smiled. “But there’s no need for either of us to be _anywhere_ but under the covers on a Sunday morning avoiding the vicissitudes of your apartment’s radiators.” 

She buried her face in his neck again and sighed warmly.

“Eventually, we’ll need coffee.” He ventured, stroking her hair.

“Eventually.”

“You know,” He took a breath and let it go along with some of his trepidation. “I’ve always expected you to leave. From the first night that we spent together.”

She stilled against him and then slowly pushed herself away so that she could see his eyes. Something in him cracked when he saw her expression, and then was swept away with exhaustive relief when he _knew_ what that symbolized - like a child scooped up by a parent after falling. _It’ll be alright, we can fix this…_

“That hurts.” She whispered.

“I know, but it’s the truth. I never thought you’d stay. And now you’re here… you have a key… I probably should have asked this last night, but I need you to tell me why you accepted it.”

“Really?”

“My track record with the obvious is dismal, Emily.”

Her sadness seemed to abate a little with that comment. She took a breath and then rolled him onto his back while propping herself up on one arm to watch him.

“Remember I once said that I worried our lives would never be as important as the killers that we chase?”

He nodded once. “I told you that I thought about that too.”

“I love what we do. It sounds strange to say that, but there’s no other way to describe it. My life has purpose… meaning…”

He nodded again. He understood that completely.

“But I’ve always been followed by this shadow. When the work ends, what becomes of us? Will we be left with nothing but bodies and memories and scars? Maybe a career case folder with more successes than failures in it? In the past I have found myself swallowed by the intensity of what I’ve chosen for myself - it is consuming but it still leaves you hollow somehow. It’s not enough, Spencer - I always knew that it wouldn’t be enough.”

He thought about how work had always taken precedence over people for him. Always. Work was consistent, work was focused, but people were unpredictable, irrational, and, without exception, they always left. While he often worried about his life’s priorities, as she did, he’d never come to the conclusion about it that she had. He couldn’t stand the leaving part. It cut through his intellectual layers and activated some primal fear that he was helpless to control. Since he’d never figured out how to make someone stay, he’d decided that work was just safer.

“I wanted more, I just didn’t know how to get it. Then, that night at The Cloak and Dagger I saw…” She paused and then shrugged a little. “Something _more_. It was just a feeling that I decided to follow - to see where it went. I had no expectation that I would hold any lasting interest for you.” She leaned in and ran a finger along his cheekbone as he lay still and shocked beneath her. “But here we are.”

“Here we are…” He murmured. Work _was_ safer, but as she hovered over him - dark hair brushing the faint freckles on her shoulders, eyes searching his for understanding - he realized that it would never be enough ever again.

“It’s been more difficult than I imagined, but I’m not leaving unless you ask me to go, Spencer. Is that clear enough for you?”

He nodded and just stared once again paralyzed by his inability to express himself. He had no meaningful scale of gratitude to use, but suspected that what he felt at that moment might qualify as the new maximum measure of that quality. Prentiss watched him, holding his stare even though he saw that it was making her flushed and nervous, and then she leaned in closer.

“And also… you’re a pretty fantastic lay. I can’t imagine any woman voluntarily giving that up unless she had some sort of mental disorder.”

She chuckled a little and then grabbed his lower lip between her teeth gently pulling until he got the message. It took him an annoying span of time to organize his thoughts, but when he did, the only thing that came to him was to pull her under him and make love to her until they both went limp.


	30. Chapter 30

The day it happened had been unremarkable. They had bumped into one another in the staff kitchen and she had wordlessly fixed a mug of coffee and handed it to him with a smile. She’d done the same thing much earlier in his kitchen, smoothing out some of the tangles in his sleep-styled hair as she mumbled hello. He’d kissed her then - an insufficient substitute for ‘seeing you yawning in my kitchen at six on a Thursday morning fills me so completely that I fear I may burst from delight’. But it had just been a kiss and he never knew if she’d understood the rest.

She’d been a little distant in the past few weeks; even he had noticed it. And, in hindsight, that made perfect sense: Interpol had contacted her, Ian Doyle had escaped, her former associates had been murdered, and in all probability, Doyle had threatened her directly. But at the time, he’d assumed (rather myopically) that he’d been spending too much time on his thesis and that she felt a little ignored. That vein of fear that ran under his whole life churned and bubbled, so he’d tried to compensate by being extra attentive and watching the minutest details. Her eyes, her hands, her mouth… In time, he would figure it all out and she’d be like an open book to him, he told himself and soothed his racing pulse. All he needed was time. 

Despite his fears about giving her a key, it had been the best one hundred and sixty-nine days of his life. After he had given it to her, she’d spent most of her waking time with him. Her clothes, books, and personal possessions began a slow but steady migration to his apartment. It should have been traumatic for him; past attempts at meaningful connection (that nonetheless had far less impact on his life) usually left him feeling disturbed and unbalanced. It was very difficult to assimilate another’s world view into his own. But this hadn’t felt claustrophobic or restrictive to him; they just slotted themselves into the empty spaces that they already worked around in their lives. He went about his life as he normally would, except now, _she_ was there as well. 

Objectively, he knew that this probably wasn’t fair - he hadn’t changed much to accommodate her and the standard pair bonding paradigm insisted that compromise was the key to growth and longevity. But if it ever concerned her, she never showed it. Perhaps it was just an absurd extension of her belief that he shouldn’t conform to outside opinion. She appeared equally happy whether they were watching old Buster Keaton movies, or arguing over paperwork, or buying groceries, or sleeping in on Saturdays. 

So whatever they were doing, it was working and he was inexpressibly happy.

But then the interagency briefing happened and she had suddenly disappeared. He knew, as a man, he should have been enraged at her deception, disgusted by her sexual manipulation of Doyle, and aghast at her shocking amorality in the case, but, once again, he thought that there would be time for all of that later. He just needed to find her; he needed her to be safe.

But there was only Morgan covered in her blood, and Garcia weeping softly in the hospital waiting room, and J.J.’s face as she walked through the doors and just shook her head in simple finality. There was no more time to be had. He couldn’t remember anything after that - the day just ended. That morning she had been real, the balanced equation of his previously incomplete self, but by the afternoon she was _gone_ as if she never existed and the newly revealed mystery of her life became as indistinct to him as smoke.

He started crashing through the scenes of his life no longer anchored by the things he had come to trust. He couldn’t go to work because he hadn’t yet designed a mask effective enough to hide his grief, and he couldn’t remain at home because he found that she was _everywhere_. Now, the way that she had slotted into his life seemed like a punishment, but a punishment for what? All he’d done was love her. Maybe he was being punished for finally being able to say the words that she was no longer capable of hearing. Maybe he was being punished for believing that she’d _stay…_

She left him all that she had. It wasn’t much in terms of physical possessions, but she had two substantial life insurance policies. When he read the notation attached to the federal policy that stated the money was to be used to help his mother, and if she were no longer living, just to be used as he saw fit, he had a small panic attack in the Bureau’s HR department. The alarmed clerk gave him a paper bag that he stared at with absolute cluelessness. He didn’t know what to do with it unless the human resources lady was suggesting that he collect up the pieces of himself that were being chipped away by every new revelation. The second policy was privately held and the payout was ludicrous. He’d been so taken aback by these unseen gestures that his first impulse was to push them as far from him as possible. He tried to give the second policy’s funds to Ambassador Prentiss, but when he’d called her about it, she had flatly refused stating that Emily ‘must have had her reasons’ in a disinterested tone. It was deeply unsettling that he had no idea what those reasons might have been.

He had made it through the funeral. It wasn’t socially acceptable that he be absent, he knew that much, but he had no anachronistic notions about what lay beyond death. Emily was gone. She was not watching over them in some disembodied form and all that they were lowering into the ground was a lifeless organism in a chemically forestalled, semi decomposed state. There was nothing of her laughter, or her curiosity, or the way her mouth shaped the sound of his name in that coffin; there was nothing of the hope that he allowed himself to feel because she existed. The ceremony was meaningless to him as were the sentiments of sorrow shared by his friends. They didn’t know what he felt and he didn’t know how to articulate his grief. He tried to develop a metaphor - screaming while being slowly crushed in a car compactor, or falling into an arctic crevasse knowing that there would be nothing more in one’s life other than twilight and a numbing demise - but every idea seemed a little hysterical and insufficient. 

What he wanted to say was _I love her, and now she’s gone_ , but he knew that none of them would understand how that statement had irrecoverably altered him.


	31. Chapter 31

The team settled into their chairs in the conference room prepped with morning coffee and the armor that they wore when facing the details of a new case. Rossi felt that, frankly, the coffee was more useful but what the hell… they all had their superstitions when it came to dealing with the job. Hotch strode in looking extra mortician-like which immediately caught Rossi’s attention. It made him feel like a failure that he couldn’t stop his friend from turning professional sorrow into performance art.

“Before Garcia begins the briefing, I have an announcement.” He said quietly while looking nowhere in particular. “This doesn’t have anything to do with any of our cases but I’m certain that you’d want to know…”

_Oh God, what fresh hell is this…_

The whole room was watching him as he laid out his papers before him meticulously.

“My counterpart in the Italian station of Interpol informed me that the body of Ian Doyle was found last Friday in an alley off the Ballarò market. He had a double tap entry wound to the sternum and a single shot to the frontal lobe.”

Garcia took an audible breath and Rossi watched in silence as Morgan reached out and squeezed her hand tightly. “A professional hit.” He nodded his head.

Rossi flicked his gaze as subtly as he could across the table to Reid. The kid was just staring at the tabletop in front of him. If he hadn’t blinked, Rossi might have assumed that he was a cardboard cutout or something.

“I’m not so sure.” Hotch cleared his throat and then shot Garcia a look of apology which was code for her to quickly cover her ears. And she did. “My counterpart said that after Doyle died, he was shot in the heart with a 12-gage shotgun. The range was so close that it basically obliterated the organ.”

“Ouch. That’s personal.” Seaver chimed in even though she had no connection with this event at all. “Does Interpol have any leads on the shooter?”

“They aren’t looking for any.” Hotch said with finality. “I know that this isn’t cause for celebration, but I felt it important that you all know so that you may try and achieve… some closure in the matter.”

 _Yeah, good luck with that._ Rossi missed Prentiss with a depth that surprised him. He missed her sarcasm and her ballsiness and her unerring bullshit detector. She had been a beautiful addition to his life and he found that he meant that in a completely unsexist, all-encompassing way. When she died, he felt a large, meaningful hole was blown straight through the center of him, and he wished that he had been twenty years younger so that he could have hunted Doyle down himself. 

But he and Prentiss had just been friends. 

Hotch started the briefing but Rossi just watched Reid and tuned everything else out. The kid had been going through the motions for months now but his mimicry hadn’t done much to cover how lifeless he had become. Rossi had had many a late night conversation with Hotch about it, and he suspected that they were going to have a few more based on this little bit of news. Hotch had privately confided that Reid’s counseling sessions had been the most heartbreaking, and the ones that he felt the least effective in. Rossi hoped that Reid might come to him privately, being that they had an unspoken understanding about the true nature of his relationship with Prentiss, but the genius never darkened his doorway. Or he didn’t understand that the doorway was open to begin with.

With case details disseminated and a new psychotic deviant to catch, the team shuffled out of the conference room with a grim sort of purpose. He felt the ghost of Prentiss walking beside them as they prepped their materials and double-checked their go bags.

“You think he’s gonna be okay?” Morgan sidled up beside Rossi as he collected some files. He was staring at the back of Reid’s head as the guy packed a spine-snapping tome into his messenger bag. “Ya know… with this Doyle news and everything…”

“Hard to say.” Rossi sighed and legitimately wished that he had some dad experience at times like these. “He’s really lost something.”

“We _all_ lost something when she died, Rossi.” Morgan gave him a sharp look.

“We haven’t lost what he’s lost.”

He left it at that and headed for the elevators. Rossi had trouble measuring Reid sometimes, but he saw the set of the man’s shoulders and the blankness in his everyday expressions, and it sang out a familiar song to him. He remembered that tune from the day that he signed his first divorce papers, and from the day that he buried Carolyn. And for all of his coping skills and his gruff determination to keep going, Rossi had heard strains from that song every day of his life since then. So, he recognized it when he heard it playing for others: he knew that Reid had lost the love of his life.


	32. Chapter 32

“Sir.”

Something dull and hard tapped his ribs. He made a muffled complaint and tried to sink further into sleep - whatever this was, it was an annoying dream and he was so damned tired.

“Sir!”

Perhaps this was one of those dreams that you had to awaken from in order to clear it from your subconscious. He blinked and felt the scratch of his contacts against his eyelids. Great… fell asleep with his lenses in again. He should just go back to his glasses…

“Sir, wake up. You can’t sleep here.”

The hard object jabbed him again, and then he heard another voice telling the first one to ease up a bit. Reid blinked rapidly and tried to make sense of the situation: it was incredibly bright and oddly cool. His butt was numb and there was a terrible pain in his neck as he snapped to attention when he realized that he _wasn’t_ dreaming.

He was on a park bench in the middle of the day. Perhaps it had been raining earlier because his pants were clammy and sticking to his thighs unpleasantly. How could he have fallen asleep in the rain? In _public_? It was almost unimaginable to him. He looked up and saw two of D.C.’s finest on horses staring down at him. One had his truncheon out and was tapping it against the toe of his boot.

“Hello, sunshine.” Boot-tapper said with a look of disappointment on his face. “This is a public park, man - _kids_ play here. Have some respect. You can’t sleep on a damned taxpayer park bench like you own it, ya know…”

“I’m sorry, officers. It won’t happen again. I just closed my eyes for a second…” Reid felt around his pockets to see if he’d wandered out with his FBI badge. That would shut them up.

“You bet your ass it won’t happen again…” Boot-tapper pointed his stick at Reid’s chest.

“Easy there, Don…” The other cop chimed in.

“I’m serious.” Don gave his partner a withering look, and then turned back to Reid. “There are plenty of grimy holes for you to sleep in. Get outta this park, ya hear me? We’ll be back in forty minutes and you’d better not still be here or I’m gonna run ya in.”

Reid’s confusion was beginning to clear and he started to take offense at the officer’s tone. He didn’t have his badge on him, but this cop couldn’t chase a citizen out of a public park. Don egged his horse forward enough so that the beast’s head forced Reid to sit back against the bench as far as he could, then the cop turned them both away with a grumble. The other cop leaned forward in his saddle with a sympathetic look.

“Listen, there’s a good shelter over near 2nd Street. It’s clean and safe, but you have to get there early because beds go quick, you understand? Stay out of the park, friend.”

The cop turned to follow his partner as Reid’s face creased in confusion.

“I’m not homeless.” He called after then with incredulity. Then he looked down at himself.

_Oh._

Not only was he wet from sleeping in the rain, his pants were creased and ratty at the hems, his sneakers were splitting from their soles, and his dress shirt was thin and discolored from over washing. He couldn’t remember how long he’d been wearing it either. Hanks of hair had fallen into his face and he tucked them behind his ears with irritation. He probably looked _exactly_ like a homeless person to others.

Then it hit him square in the chest that he wasn’t doing well. He’d tried - for eight months he’d tried to fake his way through day-to-day living - but he had to admit defeat and concede that his mimesis was a failure. He hurt all the time, as if he’d been nailed down to this new reality with a thousand spikes that stung every time he moved or spoke or breathed. 

This reality without _her_. 

He wasn’t sleeping. He didn’t eat much. He could barely muster the energy to go to work most days, and he only did that because he had a desperate hope that what it originally meant to him would come back and save him. But it wouldn’t: _she_ had become inseparable from the work in the end, and moving forward without her was like hoping that you could hold your breath for the rest of your life. 

He rose from the bench and groaned like a ninety-year old from the aches that never left him. He was a personal mess - perhaps irretrievable - but narcolepsy in public was a serious problem. Maybe he should talk to Hotch about this… he knew that he’d probably worn out his welcome at J.J.’s. She was sympathetic, but she had moved on - they all had. It was how grief worked. But he just couldn’t. You couldn’t ‘have’ things and then go back to living as a ‘have not’ - you couldn’t un-know things once you knew them. He couldn’t have her; she was beyond him now. But he also couldn’t return to a time when he didn’t know how being with her would affect him. His books were quiet, his life was still; the sky changed and time passed as he sat like a stone and waited. It was the only thing that he knew to do. He’d asked Hotch how long it took before things changed - until food tasted like food again, or blinking didn’t seem like such an effort - and all Hotch had said was ‘it depends’. Hotch had been silent after that but the look on his face told Reid what he suspected all along: it might take forever.

He walked past shops and avoided his reflection until it started to rain again. He huddled under a small awning and waited for the cloudburst to pass, and then he worried about being shooed away by a territorial shopkeeper. He faced his reflection and saw himself, thin and hunched, with deep hollows under his eyes and his bedraggled hair plastered to his head. He’d have to do better than this. He reached up and touched a strand that had fallen into his face again. It was nearly to his chin.

He lurched out into the rain again and kept his head down until he arrived at his destination. A bell rang as he entered the shop and an old man in a smock gave him a smile that his appearance probably didn’t deserve.

“Horrible day out, huh? Forgot your umbrella?”

Reid thinned his lips and nodded once.

“Well, never mind. You’ll leave here feeling better, I promise you that.”

_A lofty promise…_

Reid took a seat and the old barber swung the chair until he saw his reflection again.

“So, what’ll it be today?”

His fingers reached up to the wet end of the strand hanging in his face. _I loved it when she ran her fingers through my hair…_

“Cut it off.” Reid said quietly. “Just cut it all off.”


	33. Chapter 33

The elevator doors slid open on the sixth floor and revealed a pissed off David Rossi. It wasn’t the best way for Reid to begin his day. He stood in the elevator cab for a moment and processed the situation before he nodded at Rossi and mumbled a hello to him as he tried to step around his fierce co-worker.

“Where have you been?” Rossi demanded and blocked Reid’s passage to the bullpen.

Reid blinked. He was missing something here. “The Metro. The VRE. A moment ago I was in the lobby. Really, your question is far too vague…”

“Don’t be smart. I’ve been calling and texting you for over an hour.”

“Sorry.” He looked at his shoes and scanned through his recent conversations to see if he had neglected an early appointment. “Did I miss something? Do we have an urgent case?”

He heard Garcia sing out one of her patented squeals and he craned his neck to look around Rossi. Everyone was huddled around his desk, and he was overwhelmed by a sinking dread that they were planning a surprise of some kind. He didn’t like surprises. Not anymore.

Rossi stepped to block his view again; his behavior was becoming suspicious. “Reid, listen to me-”

Someone called out a name that he had been consciously trying to expunge from himself for nearly nine months, and his body moved before he thought about it. Rossi caught him by the shoulders and held firm, but he could still see. The crowd around his desk parted slightly and through that crack he saw _her_ , smiling cautiously, eyes worried and shadowed, before people reformed a wall around her blocking her from view.

“Emily!” He breathed and twisted to free himself from Rossi.

“That’s why I was calling you - to give you a head’s up…”

Rossi wouldn’t let him go and he forced himself to glance away from the crowd in the bullpen and give the man a cutting look. He grabbed Rossi’s hands and tried to pry free but Rossi just stared him down and held firm.

“Let me go!” Why wouldn’t he release him? Emily was _right there!_ He had to move, had to go… even if it was an illusion… Everything else drained away until he was filled with nothing but the deranged, hysterical tattoo of her name ringing through him with every beat of his pulse.

“No.” Rossi wrestled him aside and out of view of the bullpen. “You can’t go to her like this… in front of everyone…”

“Like what?!?”

“Like a man who’s just received a benediction he didn’t know he’d asked for in the first place. Like a man desperately in love.”

Reid went still under Rossi’s hands and dropped his eyes to the floor again.

“It’s okay, kid. I get it, I really get it. But you gotta pull yourself together first. You know that there are questions here that need to be answered, and many of them can’t be done in front of an audience.”

One of Rossi’s hands smoothed across Reid’s shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly. Reid didn’t like being touched as a rule, but this wasn’t so bad. The intention was good, he reminded himself. He still wanted to race to Prentiss and wrap himself around her like a second skin, but… yes, Rossi had a point. Propriety, secrecy, forbearance… _I can’tcan’tcan’t…_

“Go to the men’s room and splash some water on your face, kid. Think about what you need to say to her.” Rossi’s voice was gentle but Reid felt panicked at his words and his glare snapped back to the other man’s with renewed force to fight. “Relax. We both know that she came back here to see you. Do you really think that she’d leave this building before that happens? Go on now… I’ll stall for a while.”

Rossi let go of him and slowly Reid’s hands slid away too. His eyes lowered to his shoes once more and he tried to even his breathing so it didn’t sound so obvious to anyone within earshot. He really had no idea what to say, either to Prentiss or to Rossi; his famed intellect had gone suspiciously silent and he felt the impossibility of her resurrection bounce around his mind like a rubber ball in an abandoned room. He also felt uncomfortably exposed to Rossi. Although the man had his inklings, Reid had now clumsily confirmed it all, and he didn’t have a model to guide him through this new layer of their relationship. Eventually, his brain coughed up a standard, non-optional social nicety to fall back on.

“Thank you.” He mumbled as he backed away towards the washrooms, then he stopped. “But… why?”

“Why am I doing this?” Rossi smiled in a tired way. “Because I’d give anything to have Carolyn back. Even for just a day. I guess you’re luckier than I am.”

He didn’t consider luck to be a factor in any aspect of existence, but for once he didn’t have the energy to argue. And since people weren’t supposed to return from the dead, maybe he was also mistaken about the concept of luck. He’d soon find out.

Reid nodded once to Rossi and then turned and walked to the washrooms in silence.


	34. Chapter 34

“What’s going on?”

His voice arched over the mixed conversation of the crowd around the desk, and they parted to include him. But even before she saw his face, she could tell by his voice that he already knew what was coming. Her body went cold and solid all over where she sat perched on the edge of what used to be her desk. She felt encased in lead, terrified by the prospect of what she’d read in his eyes when they fell on her for the first time. She had to keep things in perspective, she told herself - he’d be angry and she couldn’t really blame him for that.

He stepped between Morgan and Garcia and stopped dead while looking at her. His hair was the shortest that she’d ever seen it and it made him seem more boylike. But when contrasted with his wardrobe of muted greys and deep blues (where had the purple gone?), it produced an overall air of weary maturity. The dark smudges under his eyes were now craters and his face looked drawn… longer somehow. And though she thought it impossible, he seemed to be even skinnier than before. She remembered his body, exposed and unashamed, holding her with surprising strength, but now he looked as if a pile of heavy books would defeat him. She swallowed hard as she took him all in at once - this _new_ Spencer Reid. He just looked serious, about everything - perhaps too serious about the world around him to actually feel it.

“Hi, Reid.” She said gently because everyone was waiting for her to say something.

“Emily.” He breathed, and it went straight to her guts and twisted them. His gaze flicked all over her and she let him get his fill while the others watched and waited to see what he’d do next. They were close friends, after all - everyone expected his reaction to be different. And it was. When he’d finished his inspection, his face didn’t change at all - his eyes focused back on her face and he slowly lowered his satchel to his feet. “I need more information to comprehend this.”

_Don’t do this, Spencer. Don’t hide yourself away under your logic. Be angry with me…_

“Doyle did attack me. That happened and I almost died. But when I awoke in hospital after surgery, it seemed that Interpol had a new assignment for me, and for that I had to be dead… at least on paper.”

“So, you faked your death at Interpol’s request.”

“Yes.”

“To hunt down Doyle for them?”

“Yes.”

“We know that Doyle is dead.” He said flatly, and she knew what was coming next. The rest of them left the question unasked because they all knew the answer already, but he wouldn’t let her get away with that. “Did you kill him?”

She breathed deeply. “That’s classified.”

“I see.”

_No, you don’t Spence! You really don’t…_

“You let us all believe that you were dead. You lied to us rather than let us help you.” His eyes twitched at the corners as he said it but otherwise he kept his calm. Someone tipped him off about her return… that had to be it. Perhaps it was done in kindness but she wanted him enraged and out of control - she wanted to be flayed under the lash of his judgment. She wanted to do penance for this.

“Some of us knew the truth.” J.J. spoke up softly and suddenly focus swiveled to her. Reid’s gaze turned almost murderous as he looked at her. Prentiss felt a sudden stab of jealousy that he was giving what she wanted most to another woman.

“Who else?” The question slid like a hidden knife from between his teeth, and J.J. just looked to Hotch. Reid turned again and Hotch just held his gaze and nodded once. Reid’s expression melted into one of profound incredulity before he closed his eyes tightly and he shook horrifically all over. Morgan went to touch him but Rossi held his hand away.

A torturous moment passed as Reid quaked under his own rage and then seemed to swallow it back into himself as he straightened and opened his eyes again. They bored down into hers and she smiled unconsciously when she knew what he was going to do next. How ironic that she’d finally learned to read him now that he was going to cast her off for good.

“Get your ass off Seaver’s desk.” He said quietly as the crowd let out a communal gasp. Even Rossi looked startled.

“Reid…” Hotch warned.

“That’s not cool.” Morgan mumbled as Garcia clutched her hand over her mouth.

“It’s okay…” Prentiss stood and tried to take responsibility.

“No, it’s not.” Reid stooped to pick up his bag at his feet but his eyes never left her. His look told her that if he could’ve burned her out of his life in that moment, he would have. “I’m taking a personal day.”

And without another comment, he stalked out of the Unit. Prentiss closed her eyes and sighed. She felt a tear tickle the edge of her eyelid and she quickly brushed it away before the fussing crowd of concern that surrounded her noticed it. She sent out a silent thanks to the genius storming out of the building; she’d never loved him more than at that moment when he demonstrated that he’d always hold her to a higher standard than what she aspired to be.


	35. Chapter 35

Alive. His mind was still working out that one, along with the concept of getting _exactly_ what you hoped for and simultaneously feeling shitty about it.

He was feeling overwhelmed and as a result, he’d made it to his apartment but once inside he’d been halted in his tracks and just stood still trying to breathe through everything as it crashed into him over and over. His hands tightened into fists at his side and only when the joints began to pulse with pain that shot up his arms did he look up and realize that he’d been in the same position for nearly an hour. He couldn’t handle it, he didn’t know how to process _this much_ alien and conflicting data at once. He felt as though he was slipping under, melting into the chaos of his amygdalae, and the panic that produced caused his chest to constrict and his pulse to pound in his ears. _This shouldn’t happen… I’m supposed to be safe here…_

He closed his eyes and forced himself to stretch out his aching hands. He’d pull it apart just like he did everything. Once he saw all of the elements, he could handle the problem. Maybe. 

Relief - that one was obvious, and it was mixed up in the far more complicated Ecstatic Joy, which he was not prepared to analyze at that moment. Distrust - not only of her and anything she had to say at this point, but also himself because he had _believed_ everything completely, and if he could be so wrong about a person’s state of existence, how could he trust his judgment about more intangible qualities like love? 

Love - yes, there was love - horrible and ungovernable and just theretherethere, always there no matter what he did. Arousal - because although she looked exhausted and he looked worse, it hadn’t been about appearance for him for a long time. It had been about her mind and her personality and her stubbornness and her hands and her eyes and the things that he couldn’t read about her all wrapped up in her smell and taste and moans and sighs; he had fucked her in lieu of saying what he should and now their intimacy was a crazy, tangled knot of emotions and physicality that he couldn’t untie. Sadness - for what she had been through and what his life had become in the last nine months, sadness that no matter what they said or did now they could never get that back again.

And then there was Anger. It flooded him, made him feel physically changed as if it had given him a different face to wear. She hadn’t trusted him with who she actually was and hadn’t even given him the opportunity to prove he was worthy of it. She didn’t believe that he’d back her up, despite years of manifest evidence to the contrary and an intimacy that made it an undeniable imperative. She’d forced him to understand what losing him would do to her and yet did not imagine or care about his own distress when she did the same to him. She spent months chasing a man that she fucked and hated, and it meant more to her than being with him; her loyalty to _a case_ was more important than loyalty to a person. But mostly it was that she’d promised that she wouldn’t leave, and then did so without a second thought. She had broken him down and remade him into this messy creature, and the sting of the betrayal was that it didn’t appear to have any meaning for her. And she’d gone and ruined the work for him as well; the puzzles would never be compelling enough for him again. So, she’d taken everything and left him with no shelter, and his anger flowed through him washing away whatever remained until it was all he knew from horizon to distant horizon.

There was a soft knock at the door and he leapt in surprise, his locked muscles moving for the first time and complaining about his neglect. He moved to the peephole and then sighed bitterly at whom he saw through it. He considered ignoring his visitor for a moment before viciously unlocking his door and swinging it wide.

“What?” He bit out and received some satisfaction in the hurt that showed on Prentiss’s face when he barked at her.

“Spencer-”

“What do you want, Emily?” He tried to moderate his tone; he didn’t _want_ to be an angry, bitter guy, it just seemed to be _happening_ somehow. “I’m really not pleasant company at this moment.”

“I would like an opportunity to explain further.” Not really a request, he noted. She’d probably hash this out on the front sidewalk with a bullhorn if he didn’t let her in. Maybe he’d test that theory…

“I don’t want that.”

“Regardless, it needs to be done.” She stiffened.

“No.” He swung the door closed and quickly flicked the lock. _Go get your bullhorn, Em._

There was a blissful minute of silence: no pleas from the hallway or frustrated knocking. He huffed out a breath and headed for his kitchen. It was early in the day but he felt he deserved some alcohol. He stopped when he heard a familiar metal scrape and a click as his door lock reversed and Emily stepped through calmly closing the door behind her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He wondered if he looked as astonished as he felt.

“I have a key, remember?” She held her key up. It was tarnished and a well-worn leather thong had replaced its purple string. He refused to entertain deductions about its appearance… _tarnished from consistent contact with natural oils, perhaps from wear around a neck, rubbing against clothing…_

“I’d like that back.” He sent his gaze to the floorboards.

“Uh… yes. Of course.” He heard her step forward and then stop. They were both silent for an uncomfortable length of time.

“Emily, I’ll ask again: what do you want?”

He heard her sigh but refused to look at her. “I want to say I’m sorry - away from everyone else - and I want to explain why I had to do what I did. I _hate_ that I’ve hurt you, Spencer.”

“But you have. And even the most reasonable explanation won’t fix that.”

“Yes… I-I guess that’s true…”

“Then why bother? You’re expending energy in anticipation of an impossible outcome.”

“Don’t do that - don’t hide behind blind rationalism. This is personal, Spencer… I’m trying to explain that this wasn’t easy for me-”

“I don’t care if it was easy or excruciating for you. I also don’t care that you screwed a suspect to make a case, or that you lied for years to people whom you claimed to trust, or that you operated outside the law when you were threatened, or even that you killed a man rather than run the risk that he’d ever walk free again. I assume that these are compensatory side effects of the psychology that made you an excellent deep cover agent.” 

His flicked his gaze up from the floor and pinned her where she stood with one of his stares that he knew made her uncomfortable. He was rewarded when she flinched and looked away. Hurting her suddenly felt far too good.

“You clearly felt that you had a job to do, and you did it. I know how important the work is to you - I see no reason why you’d lie about that.”

“Yeah, the work is important.” She growled and stared back at him. “And there aren’t many people who can do it. I can, so I do - it’s pretty simple, really. And I’m not sorry that he’s dead. I tried doing it the legal way and he found a crack in the darkness and wriggled his way into the light again. He killed my colleagues - my friends - and he threatened to do the same to the team… to _you_ , Spencer.”

He waved her statement away. “Your moral relativism isn’t germane to this conversation. I told you that I don’t care about your justifications or your guilt-”

“Well then, what do you care about?” She snapped.

“Why did you work so hard at playing me?” He needed to be steady for this, to ask the right things in the right way. His eyes searched around his apartment until they landed on the fourth shelf of his enormous bookcase. His Chemical Society Review journals were out of order. “You made me believe… you told me you’d stay… Maybe you’re morally bankrupt - I don’t know - but I hope you’re not evil, Emily. I-I just want to know why you’d bother messing me up this much.”

“Spencer…” She stepped forward and he flinched and stepped away to maintain their distance.

“You made a fool of me. From my first awkward mistakes, through strange connections I didn’t understand, and then into profound grief… I… I don’t understand your motivations. Perhaps it was just fun for you in the beginning but… I _believed_ you. How could you continue to do it once you saw that? How did you justify ignoring how I had irretrievably fallen after that first night at The Cloak and Dagger?” 

The words burned through him, staining his mouth with a coppery taint. Out of the corner of his eye, she moved in an awkward way. His eyes flicked to her and saw that she had grabbed the back of his worn couch, her fingers gripping tight enough to go pale at the tips of her ruined nails. He risked a look at her face and saw her brows drawn, lines around her eyes tight just like when she couldn’t absorb what her senses were telling her. His glance dropped again and he laughed softly to cover the terrible sinking in the middle of his chest.

“Oh, that’s perfect.” He murmured and nodded to himself. “All of those profiling skills and you never really saw it…”

“I saw it, Spence, or I saw facets of it.” She rasped. “Perhaps not so early as that night but… I didn’t ignore anything. And I wasn’t playing you - everything that happened between us was real.”

“Yes.” He snapped. “Including the deception and abandonment.”

“He was going to kill you!” Prentiss thumped the back of his couch to get his attention. “You don’t know… he found me two days before I left and showed me surveillance photos _of you!_ He told me in lurid detail what he’d do.”

“And I’m too weak to protect myself, right?” He yelled and the echo surprised him. “The delicate freak: everyone needs to shelter me… even from the truth.”

“Don’t play the infantilized martyr. You know exactly what you can handle and so do I.” She was fighting back but he could see that he’d scared her. This was new behavior for him and it put her off balance. 

“Yes, you do. You took my personality and intimacy, and you manipulated it. You took my safe place, and you tainted it. You took my greatest fear, and served it up to me on a platter. It’s fair to say that I’ve been infantilized but I’m no martyr - I didn’t volunteer for it. I loved you - we were a friendship caught on fire and I was content to burn forever for you, even if I didn’t really understand it. Perhaps you never got how much that decision changed me.”

His voice broke and he growled ferociously as he struggled to keep control. These things felt as though they were killing him from the inside out. He just needed to get them out….

“But you left. You traipsed halfway around the world to assassinate a man that you hated. _That_ meant more to you.”

“Spence…” It came out as a sob.

“I… I don’t have a behavior model to help me deal with this level of rejection, so… I think that it might be less painful to ignore it.” He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. In, out, in, out… “I’m glad that you’re not dead, Emily. Truly. Now… if you would so kind as to leave me in peace, I’d appreciate it.” 

He could hear her breathing, wet and strained, but couldn’t look at her. He didn’t want a visual memory of her walking away. 

“I came back…”

“It might have been kinder if you hadn’t.” He whispered and closed his eyes. “Please leave.”

“Spencer Reid, listen to me…” She tried again to assert herself and a small corner of him lit up at her determination, but it was too late. This was just too hard to navigate through.

“No.” He shook his head. “Goodbye, Emily.”

He listened to her footsteps as she walked to the door (eight), the sound that the ring on her right hand made as it met the doorknob (middle C), the creak of the floorboard as she crossed the threshold (eighth board from the wall), the click as she closed the door behind her (more of a thunk, really), and the number of footsteps until he could no longer hear her (sixteen). 

Reid stood in silence and stared at his feet, too afraid to look up and move into a moment _beyond_ his association with Emily Prentiss. She was no longer dead, but she was gone. He couldn’t move because his body was overcome by the sensation to run after her. It wasn’t clear to him whether that scenario would end in passion or violence, so he stood still and waited for the impulse to pass. Either outcome was unacceptable to him.

The floorboards in the hallway creaked again and his head snapped to the door as he held his breath. _It isn’t her… she wouldn’t come back again after that…_ The boards creaked, became louder, and then quieter in a steady rhythm as someone passed by his door. He let his breath go and felt his anger rise again as a large part of him curled in on itself in disappointment.

_She’s not coming back. Ever._

He forced his gaze away from the door and his eyes fell on his disordered Chemical Society journals again. She corrupted everything, even his meticulous, soothing sense of calm. He marched over to the shelf, ripped the volumes out and slammed them back into their proper places. In the process, he creased one of the covers as it folded back against another copy. He pulled the journal free again and straightened the fold, but the crease was deep and the cover now winged up like something unbalanced and unruly. He gritted his teeth and tried to flatten it again, but the cover popped back up.

Reid stared at the journal and watched it begin to shake in his hand. Hatred for it flooded through him, and then he hated that _he hated it_. He felt the cascading onslaught of violence beyond his control. This is so stupid, he thought, it’s just a journal. But his hands shook as if he was seizing and he flung the journal across the room, watching it smash into the wall by the door. It fell to the floor with various pages folding under themselves in new creases, and that damned cover still popped up. 

The violence felt wonderful and left streaks of energy up his arm and through his shoulder. It had replaced the suffocating anger sitting in his chest, but only for a moment. He looked at the ruined journal and then decided that nothing deserved to be pristine. He turned back to the bookcase and dragged his arm across the shelf, sending the rest of the journals to the floor. Then he reached for the psychology books. They were hard bound so they made impressive bangs as they hit the hardwood. He picked up a few and threw them at the wall, smiling when they left sharp-edges dents in the plaster. 

He flicked thin-spined fiction and weighty textbooks; he lobbed old National Geographics and flung grad school papers that swished through the air like birds before landing across his feet. He kicked coffee table books and hefted art books over his shoulders with a delicious strain of untested muscles. He ripped monographs into ribbons and sent the victims at his feet into the air once again as he booted various things into his coffee table and against the couch. Things began to smash but he couldn't care less about what he broke: it was all just _stuff_ anyway. None of it actually protected him, none of it gave a damn about whether it got ruined or not. He envied that and then hated that he’d indulged such an irrational thought to begin with. He didn’t realize that he’d been yelling the entire time until the building super slammed on the door and threatened to call the cops - his neighbors had complained, apparently. He thought they ought to mind their own business, and told the super as much just before he grabbed his coat and keys, and stormed away leaving his chaos behind him.


	36. Chapter 36

His phone rang and it took him much longer than it should have to extract it from his pocket and lay it on the bar. He squinted at the number and then slugged back the last of his glass of bourbon. God, would this day of humiliation never end?

He flipped the phone open as he waved over the bartender for another refill. “What do you want?”

_“Reid?”_

“Yeah.”

_“Are you… drunk?”_

“Sort of. That’s the goal, anyway. The process takes time though…”

_“I’m learning all sorts of things about you today.”_

He sighed with irritation but the bartender returned with a fresh glass, which mollified him a little. “I’ll restate the question: What do you want, Rossi?”

_“Kid, you know why I’m calling.”_

“Today, with Prentiss.” He muttered as something invisible and sharp sliced its way between his ribs.

_“That certainly was one way to handle it. Probably not how I woulda done it…”_

“Well then, why don’t _you_ forgive her for lying and the betrayal and turning your life upside down?”

There was a noticeable pause over the phone. _“Spencer, I’m gonna assume that you’ve been drinking since you left the office because SURELY you can’t be this stupid and sober at the same time.”_

“What? What are you talking about, Rossi? Make sense.”

 _“I’m gonna cherish that last sentence until the end of my days: Dr. Spencer Reid asked me to ‘make sense’…”_ Rossi was chuckling and then let if fall away before continuing. _“She came back for you, kid. She didn’t have to, you know… she coulda started over again someplace else. It probably woulda been easier. But she didn’t. She screwed up big time and she knows it, but she came back to face it, to face you.”_

Reid could hear his breath rattling in and out of his chest like lashes of rain through hurricane shutters. He couldn’t stand the sound of his own frailty so he downed more of his bourbon almost choking himself in the process.

_“If that isn’t love, I don’t know what else to call it.”_

“Stop it, Dave.” He croaked. “Doyle’s been dead for months. What took her so long to come back if she ‘loves’ me so much?”

_“How about building up her courage? What about the fear of you reacting like the colossal asshat that you were this morning? How about her other commitments - to Interpol, to the State Department, and all of that ridiculous international red tape? Do you know that she turned down the Station Chief position that Interpol offered her in London? It woulda made her career and they lobbied her hard to take it, but she didn’t. Instead she’s stateside, jobless, and prostrating herself in front of people she’s lied to and betrayed.”_

Reid made a wet, noncommittal noise into the phone. He heard Rossi return it with a long, loud sigh of his own.

_“Listen, I don’t know how long this has been going on between you two, but I’m gonna assume that the night I overheard you in that motel wasn’t the first time. New lovers don’t make those kinda noises…”_

Reid began to choke slightly and he felt his ears go red.

_“I’m sorry… but you guys were loud. It was really hard to ignore…”_

“Jesus… please stop or I’m going to hang up.”

_“Let me finish and then you can return to your marinating process. I only ever gave myself to one person in my whole life. I love women and I’ve been with plenty of wonderful ones, but I only ever cherished one. And I let her go. I was young and stupid, and thought that love like that happened to everyone all the time. But it doesn’t - we’re lucky if it happens at all. What I overheard that night made me think of Carolyn and, I’m not gonna lie here, it made me a little jealous. And also a little worried.”_

“Worried?”

_“Yeah, because I didn’t think that Emily was the kind of woman to fall for… well, someone like you, kid. And it was clear to me that YOU had fallen for her. So, I tried to warn you off. I’m sorry for that, by the way…”_

“W-why?”

 _“Because you’re great, kid. Obviously. And because she musta fallen for you too because she dragged her ass halfway across Europe through some Kafka-esque bullshit just to get back to you. The only reason for her to risk any of this is love… the kinda love that makes you give up everything else to have. Take it from me, Reid: don’t throw this away unless you’re absolutely sure that what she’s done is unforgivable.”_

“Th-there are no absolutes in nature…” He stuttered, not knowing what prompted him to say it in the first place.

_“Well then, I guess you’ve got some fences to mend, don’t you? Happy hangover, kid.”_

Rossi’s call disconnected abruptly and left Reid listening to a dead phone with a sloppy, slack jawed expression on his face. He eventually placed the phone back on the bar and waved over the bartender for another refill. He was at the threshold of being drunk enough to allow Rossi’s opinion in, but his resentment was putting up the last of its fight to prevent him from getting there. When his drink arrived he stared down into it, wondering if some Dionysian clarity lay at the bottom, but then shrugged away the distraction and swallowed it down. He looked up and saw his reflection in the mirrored liquor display, distorted and bruised by the lighting and his skewed perspective; he didn’t recognize himself and sighed that he had finally achieved his goal. Someone was peeking out from beneath his skin - someone that he fought hard to keep in control, but now he wanted his counsel.

“So?” He asked his reflection. “What do you want to do about this?”


	37. Chapter 37

Prentiss flapped her umbrella like a broken wing as she entered the bar. She was pissed at the rain, and D.C., and her life in general until the door closed behind her and shut the frantic bustle of the street out with it. She took a moment to enjoy the transition from chaos to organized calm and felt a little of her edginess fall away. Yeah, she really liked this place.

Between the storm outside and the perpetual gloom of the bar, it was hard to make out faces. She scanned the booths and tables but didn’t find what she was looking for. Then she saw his stooped figure at the far end of the bar, just where the general dimness gave way to light. She took a deep breath and then put one foot in front of the other.

“I can’t get away from anyone today…” He grumbled without looking up as she approached his bar stool.

“You’re not trying very hard.” She snipped, attempting to find the middle ground between irritation and compassion, and failing. “I went back to your place, saw your redecorating scheme, and figured that this would be your next stop.”

He turned to peer at her then, a scowl on his face making him seem more aggressive than she knew him to be. “Why did you go back to my apartment?”

She held up the key and cocked an eyebrow, then placed it on the bar and slid it next to his drink. 

“Oh. Uh… thanks.”

“No problem.” She mumbled and watched him stare at the key instead of her. “It was only ten blocks. In the rain.”

“Well, I suppose such heroics demand compensation…” He waved at the bartender and ordered two drinks. When the bar man placed a glass in front of her, Reid patted the seat of the stool next to him. “Have a drink with me, Emily.”

She stared at him for a hard minute before sliding onto the stool. He turned to her and raised his glass, waiting for her to do the same. 

“Just how drunk are you?” She asked.

“Drunk enough.” He shook his glass and waited until she raised her own in a toast, and then knocked half of it back in one swallow. She took a liberal swig and then coughed as it burned her throat.

“This is gasoline.”

“No, it’s bourbon. The trick is to not care that you are basically poisoning yourself. After about four of them, taste is no longer relevant.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” She pushed the drink away. “At least I finally got to see the show.”

“What show?”

“The Drunk Reid show. You promised that I’d get to witness it someday, remember?” She watched him smile as the memory came back to him and then sank under the weight of their distance from that moment. Her stomach threatened her suddenly, with the burn of the bourbon leading the charge. She forced the words out in order to stay in control. “So, drunk enough for what?”

His brow creased and he was having trouble focusing. He turned to face her again and had to lean heavily on one arm against the bar to keep him steady.

“You said that you’re ‘drunk enough’.” She tried again. “Drunk enough for what?”

“Drunk enough for my prefrontal cortex to initiate a conversation with my limbic system. I keep the feeling guy at bay so much that we don’t collaborate on many decisions. He’s not much of a conversationalist anyway, but at least with my inhibitions in a deep freeze, I can poll his opinion on things.”

She was shocked at how open he was, in such contrast to the man that she’d argued with hours earlier. His gaze, his body language, his frank assessment all spoke to how he was struggling to get a grip on the situation. The fact that neither his intellect nor his emotions had won the debate raging in him yet filled her was a sudden spike of hope.

“So, what does he think?” She murmured.

Reid slowly shook his head. “He’s angry… so angry…”

“Anger is an active emotion. It carries with it the anticipation of change.”

“Change to what?”

She shrugged. “That’s up to you.”

“This situation doesn’t feel like it’s mine to control. In fact, I’ve never really felt in control of anything. Usually that makes me very uncomfortable, so I try to force a system of logic over everything. The results, as you know, are a mixed bag.”

He chuckled sadly and downed what was left of his bourbon. “What I do know is that sometimes my instincts are more valuable than my intellect. I should’ve listened to the impulse that told me to quit when you showed up in the Unit the first time…”

She hadn’t seen that one coming and when it hit home the pain lit up her nerve endings as surely as if he’d sliced her. “You would’ve rather avoided knowing me entirely?”

He slouched back to face her, his expression distant as if talking to a memory. “What I saw that day was someone gorgeous and intimidating, and I did not feel adequate to the challenge of assimilating that. Retreat seemed advisable. But then I was distracted by becoming a drug addict,” He chuckled again but she failed to understand why he found that funny. “And by the time I’d made my way back from that, I’d discovered that I had become accustomed to you. Quitting seemed moot at that point.” 

Now the pain had become anger that she could call her own. He made it sound as if his resentment stretched back to the very beginning and she wasn’t about to take responsibility for _that_. She was grateful to finally talk openly with him but this conversation felt as if he’d pushed her naked into oncoming traffic. Maybe he was doing it on purpose to sever their connection, but she was going to take advantage of this direct route to his emotions in order to set a few things straight before she left.

“Listen, you can wish that we’d never met all you want but that’s not much help to either one of us now, is it?” 

He sat straighter as he geared up to rebut her statement, but she just waved at him dismissively and carried on.

“Don’t worry - I’ll go, but I’m going to clear the table first. I assume that you are too drunk to make a speedy getaway at this point, so you’re just going to sit there and listen, and maybe some of this will get through to where its supposed to go now that most of your filters are offline.”

She picked up her glass and took a fortifying gulp, wincing as it warmed her throat.

“So… first things first. Back at your apartment you implied that my morality was relative. You’re probably right about that. There’s something missing in me, just like there’s something missing in you. Maybe we both fit into some unsavory part of the psychological spectrum…”

She held his gaze for a moment to emphasize her point.

“This grey area allows me to do things that others can’t - I don’t know if that’s good or bad, it just _is_. You of all people should understand what it means to be judged on one sliver of your personality… and this greyness? That’s all it is: a sliver, and I’m pretty sure that you know that.”

His glance slid away from hers and fell to the bar top. She softened her tone a little.

“Whether you’re happy about it or not, you know a lot about me, Spencer. You know how far I’ll go, and you know _why_ I’d go that far. You knew it when I backed you up against that rapist in Portland, and you knew it when I took the life of the asshole who shot you.”

He looked back at her quickly, lips tight against something that he wanted to let out.

“Don’t pretend that this comes as a surprise to you, or that it somehow invalidates and overshadows everything else that you know about me.”

She leaned in a little and he held her stare. “Tell me something. If you had come face to face with Doyle after I died, would you have killed him for what he did? Be honest - your answer will remain between us.”

His stare hardened, pushing back against her in that way he’d cultivated over time. She’d probably never get used to it, she finally admitted to herself, but nevertheless she held still under it this time. As the pause between them stretched out awkwardly, he gave in with the slightest inclination of his head. It fortified her because somewhere inside she’d doubted that she really knew his answer.

“Anger gets to both of us… pushes our buttons and makes us go to some less-than-noble places. Sometimes, as much as we’d wish it were otherwise, that is who we are.” She nodded shakily and gave herself permission to break away from that stare. 

“So now, let’s get clear about another thing. Ian Doyle was a cancer that needed to be eradicated and _that was my job._ But that shouldn’t be confused with importance.”

Her finger stabbed into the scarred bar top with authority and he noticed. “If there were a thousand different ways to interpret what happened between Doyle and I, in none of those possibilities would he have ever held more of my heart than you do. He wasn’t more ‘important’ than you… in fact, even implying the comparison is ridiculous. You two weren’t the same species.”

Reid’s face went alarmingly pale alarmingly fast and it almost stopped her dead as she wondered if the bourbon had finally caught up with him. She got the bartender’s attention and asked for some water that she pushed in Reid’s direction. He ignored it, his eyes falling to his hand where it clutched the bar rail, and waited for her to continue in silence.

“Sleeping with him was invaluable to the investigation, but it was a personal mistake. It’s hard for me to judge, even now, if it was the right call or not. I’m not going to sit here and feel ashamed about it - I did it, I can’t undo it, and I refuse to allow a mistake to colour me as completely unworthy. You may think that you have a right to feel dishonored by this, but you do not. I didn’t know you then, your right to judge my decisions is not retroactive, and, perhaps most importantly, if I _had_ known you at the time, I never would’ve let that man get anywhere near me.”

“I didn’t judge you for sleeping with Doyle.” He said quietly, still gripping the bar rail like a lifeline.

“Really? Because it feels like you have.”

“I didn’t.” He looked up and shook his head once.

“That’s your intellect talking. The cave man guy inside is a whole different matter. Like you said, he’s hard to control.”

“I don’t know what to say about that. I guess I’m angry about it but I don’t know how to fix it and, as you just explained, I don’t have a right to it.” He sighed and leaned forward enough that she prepared to catch him if he lost his balance. “But what bothers me more… what eats away my heart… is that _you left_ to chase him. He could’ve been anyone - it doesn’t really matter. It was the leaving that broke me.”

She gulped quickly. He’d laid out her biggest sin and she didn’t have a good excuse to justify it. She might have left him with a portion of the truth, or hope, but she hadn’t done either and there was no way to paint that as anything other than cruel. It wasn’t what she’d intended and it certainly didn’t represent how she felt about him, so she decided that she wouldn’t try and talk him out of his anger over _that_. Instead she’d tell him what she’d come back for and hope that he’d hear her through the booze and the rage.

“There’s never going to be another guy who looks at me that way you do. There’s never going to be someone who demands that I _be_ more or try harder than you have demanded. There won’t be another man who makes me feel as safe as you do. I’m a pretty practical woman - I don’t think that I’m overstating this.”

She reached for his hand on the bar and when he didn’t move away, she laid hers on top of it. “Do you really believe that _that_ is something that I could just walk away from? What we created together was… weird… unexpected, but completely on the level. It was never my intention to ridicule or harm you, Spencer. This relationship wasn’t a game to me. When I told you that I’d stay, I meant it - I had to go away for a while, but I made sure to come back. That was a promise that I always intended to keep.”

She squeezed his hand hard. Her ragged nails were leaving marks against him but he didn’t flinch; she had to ease up when she realized what she was doing.

“Just in case any of this obscures my grand point: I love you, and I am also _in love_ with you. While one is passive and, perhaps, could be turned into an intellectual exercise, the other is not. It is kinetic and demanding and will not be satisfied by anything less than what it has already known. Do you understand?”

She waited for him to look at her again. When he did, his eyes seemed huge. She wondered if this was really making any sense to him; he was terribly drunk. But she had to keep going because this might be her last opportunity. 

“If you tell me that there’s no way past this for us, I’ll trust you and walk away. I promise - I have no desire to continue making your life miserable.”

She breathed out once and discovered that she couldn’t mask the desperate sound it made or the way it obviously shook her. “But please consider what you’ll be breaking in me if you do. I realize that it’s pretty arrogant to ask for compassion right now, but you need to know what my bottom line is. No more hedged bets, no more misunderstandings.”

He pulled back and sat straighter. His glance flicked from her, to the bar top, to his empty glass, and back again. He repeated it over and over - a tick that she knew meant that he was arguing internally with himself. After a time, he shook his head weaving dangerously as he did so.

“I didn’t even make a dent, did I?” She withdrew her hand.

He looked back at her, still shaking his head slowly. “I can’t, Em… I can’t… I heard what you said, but I don’t know how to make it fit with everything else inside me. What you’re asking isn’t fair - you want me to act like someone else.”

She watched his stare in the flickering tea lights from the bar. It was dark and a little too immediate, as if he was barely holding onto dozens of things he should’ve said somewhere, sometime. The stare was glassy and bleak, but he didn’t give in, he didn’t falter. She felt herself smile at that look. He was stretched thin, wan like watered down milk, but still fiercely, unrelentingly _him_. As compromised as he was, he’d still made his decision and she had to respect it. It was disturbing that he could still be beautiful to her like that. Maybe he hated her, but she captured this moment for herself and knew that she’d tuck it away with the others - all the others that she loved about him.

“Okay.” She said quietly, sliding off the stool and ignoring the way she suddenly felt scooped out. “Do me a favor and take a cab home tonight. Ten blocks is too far to stumble in the rain.”

He shrugged and turned back to face the bar just as she had found him. End of conversation. She sucked in a breath at the sight and then made a beeline for the front door without a backwards glance. Her eyes were stinging and she wanted to feel the rain on her face more than she wanted her next breath. She stood outside, leaned against the wall of the bar, until she was soaked through to the skin. It felt good to hide in plain sight for once; nobody passing by thought twice about a woman who may or may not have been crying outside a bar in the rain.


	38. Chapter 38

Prentiss sat in the crowded bar and tried to pretend that she was interested in the professional paranoia of her lunchtime appointment. Private defense subcontractors seemed to be overly fond of conducting job interviews in noisy, public places; she’d been on a few and, so far, that pattern appeared to be consistent. Her skill set made her an appealing candidate - multiple languages, tactical field experience, weapons knowledge, profiling intuition - but she didn’t really feel that this career path suited her, recent history notwithstanding. It didn’t help that these former Special Forces types seemed to spend half of their time flirting and the other half going on about how innovative their companies would be if they hired her as their ‘first female operator’, like she was a prize poodle or something.

She sighed as the guy outlined the salary and benefits package, and her eyes washed over the room. The TV behind the bar had CNN on and she saw a flash about an FBI case scroll across the screen before she was distracted by another question. Lunch continued and her gaze kept going back to the TV. An hour later, she’d gleaned that it was a cult case and that there had been casualties. Then the station showed a video teaser for the item before they went to an ad break: various men in suits attempting to contain the media. Hotch flashed briefly onscreen, scowling and grey-faced, amongst a line of scowling and grey-faced men. 

Prentiss’s body moved before she made up her mind. She pushed aside her plate and collected her phone while interrupting her lunch mate’s corporate diatribe. “Thank you for the interest, but I don’t think that I’m right for this position. Please excuse me... I just remembered that I have another appointment.”

Making her way to the bar, she waved the bartender over and asked him to turn the TV up. 

_Residents of Lewis County, Tennessee are reeling this afternoon after an FBI investigation resulted in a botched takedown at the New Day Organic Farm just outside of Summertown, about fifty miles south of Nashville. Officials say that the farm owner, who was under surveillance by the FBI, the ATF, and Homeland Security, was actually a doomsday cult leader using his organic produce business as a front to lure young, unsuspecting drifters into his midst with farm work. Details are sketchy at this hour, but it appears that federal agents attempted to execute arrest warrants for several residents of the farm for charges that included child endangerment. When agents stormed the property, gunfire was exchanged. At least two agents are confirmed dead. Bodies were also discovered on the farm but there is no official comment on that at this time. An unofficial source who would not appear on camera claimed that many of the bodies were children and that the number of dead could be as high as two dozen._

The reporter’s face dissolved into a series of snippets of various agency representatives saying ‘no comment’ with stony looks on their faces. Hotch was one of the faces. Prentiss’s pulse slammed in her throat and wrists. She clutched her cell phone in her hand and strained to hear the rest of the report. It detailed what little was known about the farm owner, his dealings, and the nature of the interagency investigation, and steadfastly refused to elucidate on the dead agents.

“C’mon, c’mon…” She growled and then bit her lip as she caught a strange look from the bartender.

Stock video of the farm then switched to a live feed with a reporter doing a stand-up of the latest story details. The shot showed the edge of a building where forensic teams suddenly appeared and then disappeared with loaded white bags. Prentiss took a deep breath: the Bureau used white body bags for cases with media scrutiny. The optics of them were better, apparently. She counted white flashes at the edge of the screen while the reporter yammered on: five. Five bodies in as many minutes… _Jesus._

She fidgeted on her stool, getting no new information despite the length of the report. It was a typical cable news bait-and-switch… they had to keep the viewers hooked somehow, and nothing goosed ratings like serial killers, terrorists, and cult disasters. She thumbed the edge of her phone nervously - she wanted to call in. It didn’t seem to matter that no one would give her any details, even about her friends. She wasn’t FBI anymore and she wasn’t even sure that she could call her former teammates ‘friends’ with any kind of sincerity. She was just another jobless ‘have gun, will travel’ type without any real connections, right? But she was still fighting her instinct to move, to go to them because they might need her… _He_ might need her…

Eventually, the reporter signed off promising more details in fifteen minutes, and before the live feed ended, Prentiss caught a glimpse of someone exiting the building with a group of forensic techs. His face was covered with a mask but he wore a purple shirt.

“Dammit…” 

It wasn’t much to go on, but it was better than sitting through fifteen minutes of political talking heads reports and Cialis commercials. She opened her smart phone browser and began searching for alternate feeds and views of the scene. It seemed that all of the media outlets had someone on scene, but they all had the same access more or less - which was to say, no access at all. She would have to wait for CNN to circle back to the story and display the feed again. By the time it did, her palms were sweaty and she could barely keep still. She didn’t want to freak out, she didn’t want to overreact and _call_. She’d made herself a promise to let him be, but she’d break that in a heartbeat if something had happened to him - if something _was_ happening to him. His anger would be irrelevant; there were some things that she couldn’t make herself do even for his sake.

The bartender slid up and gave her a suspicious look. “Can I get you something?”

“Scotch. Neat.” She said without looking away from the TV.

“What brand?”

“Whichever one will keep you out of my business for the longest amount of time.” She glared at him. He glanced away quickly, sliding her drink towards her before retreating to the other end of the bar. 

She looked back to the TV to see the live shot restored as the onsite reporter continued to tell the audience nothing. The guy in the purple shirt was gone, but the camera angle had been readjusted to get a better view of the building in the background. Techs continued a steady stream in and out of it, all looking alike in their teal coveralls. A minute or two passed without much of note happening. Hotch’s ‘no comment’ sound bite was shown again and she debated whether she should just call him and put an end to the suspense. She told herself that he was probably at Defcon 3 level of political bullshit now and decided that he could do without her civilian meddling. At that moment, the guy in the purple shirt reappeared from the building. He was out of focus and only half in the frame but he was the right height and skinny as hell. 

Prentiss let out an expansive sigh and sank back down onto her bar stool. Purple Shirt just stood there, unmoving, as techs and various officers walked in and out of the frame. In fact, he stood perfectly still for nearly half a minute. Prentiss’s spine stiffened as a new concern took over her. Purple Shirt slowly raised his hands and took off his decon mask. It fell away from his grip and he seemed to stagger a little, then his hands moved to his head and he held himself.

“No.” Prentiss mumbled and now her urge to move was almost impossible to contain. 

A tech emerged from the building and walked over to Purple Shirt quickly placing himself in front of the camera as a teal-coloured barrier. When the tech finally moved away, Purple Shirt had his hands shoved in his pockets and appeared to be staring at the news camera. He stood still for a moment longer and then shuffled away, first in one direction, and then back the other way in confusion. The live feed suddenly ended as the station went to commercial.

Prentiss left some money on the bar and was out the door flagging down a cab before her mind caught up with her movements.

“LaGuardia.” She told the cab driver as she settled in the back seat and dialed a number on her phone without looking. To hell with her promise; after accusing her of being morally grey, he couldn’t possibly expect her to keep her word. The call rang endlessly and then clicked into voicemail. She hung up and immediately redialed; she didn’t give herself permission to panic.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up…” She chanted as she redialed a third time and the cab driver made a risky move in midtown traffic. She almost said something to him but then the call connected.

 _“Hello?”_ He sounded hollow and small and light-years away.

“It’s me.” 

There was nothing but silence over the phone and the muffled swoosh of cross town traffic.

“You’re all over the news.”

He made a strange wheezing sound. _“Yes. It’s been…. things got…”_ His voice just stopped and she wasn’t sure if it was him or that the call was dropping out.

“Spencer?”

 _“It’s… very bad here.”_ His voice was a whisper and very unsteady.

The cabbie swerved violently sending Prentiss sliding across the vinyl seat into the doorframe. Honking ensued as well as a lot of swearing in a mixture of English and Ukrainian. 

“Hey, can we try getting there in one piece please, or does that cost extra?” She barked and then put her ear back to the phone.

_“Where are you?”_

“Manhattan.”

 _“Oh.”_ She strained to hear him. He sounded… disappointed but that couldn’t be right, and it was next to impossible to hear him with all of the Ukrainian grumbling coming from the front seat. It didn’t matter - she had a plan and his opinion on it wouldn’t stop it from happening. She soldiered on.

“Are you staying in Tennessee?”

 _“Hotch is staying on. He’s sending the rest of us home tonight.”_ There was a pause followed by some labored breathing. _“There’s nothing more we can do here.”_

I know, she told him silently. I know, just hold it together.

“I’ll be there when you land.” She said it simply and prepared to fight when he objected. But that never happened.

 _“Yes.”_ He sighed and then hung up.


	39. Chapter 39

She sat in her car at the airstrip and waited as the team members disembarked and walked through the lot in a haze. Her heart bled for them each individually, knowing exactly what sort of immediate future was in store for them. When they failed, they failed big, and sometimes the guilt could put you out of the game permanently. She hoped that they each had someone that they could count on, someone who could help them stay the course. J.J. had Will, Morgan had Garcia, Rossi and Seaver had seemed to find each other… She felt awful as she sunk low in her seat and watched her friends pass silently lost in their own heads. She wanted to help - truly - but tonight she only had enough energy to give to Reid. He didn’t have anyone else.

He shuffled towards her car, slouching hard against the weight of his satchel and go bag. He was like a twig on the brink of snapping. He slid into the passenger seat, closed the door, leaned his head back and shut his eyes without acknowledging her. A deep, wet sigh moved through him and then he raised his palms to press against his eyelids. She watched and waited, heart in her throat at the state he was in: it was worse than she thought. She’d left him alone for a month, but he looked the same as when she’d returned from Europe. She had hoped for better - for his sake. It would be hard to determine, she reminded herself, how much of his distress was about her and how much was over the Tennessee case.

“Why were you in New York?” He asked suddenly, his hands still pressing into his eyes.

“Job interviews.”

“Oh. How did they go?” He let his hands fall away and then rolled his head against the seat back to look at her. She’d never seen him so tired.

“I don’t think that they’re gonna work out.” _I’m not made of the stuff that you think I am. If I was, I wouldn’t be here now._ She couldn’t figure out why he was expending energy on small talk. Didn’t he know that she didn’t need it?

He stared at her for a moment and just breathed. “Thirty-seven. That’s how many there were: thirty-seven, including an ATF agent and a member of the tactical unit. Fifteen of them were kids under ten.”

And _that’s_ why she was there. It was exactly the sort of situation that he couldn’t handle and they both knew it. His mouth drew down forming long, sharp lines on his face as his eyes tightened and his brow furrowed. But there were no tears - he was still holding onto something that prevented them, pride perhaps. They stared at each other in the dim light of the abandoned parking lot and exchanged a wordless understanding that she deeply missed. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever achieved anything like it in the past, and considering how hard-won it was, she thought it unlikely that she’d ever accomplish it with someone else. She reached out and gently cupped his cheek with her hand and he closed his eyes as if he would fall asleep there.

“I know.” She whispered. _I get it, Spence. I read you from a pixilated image broadcast from five states away…_ “Let’s get you home.”

He sighed and kept his eyes closed. “Worst case of my career in possibly the worst ten months of my life… I couldn’t figure out what to do or say or think… I just shut down. People dying needlessly, loss that’s senseless and total…”

Her stomach soured at his words. He wasn’t only talking about Tennessee now. A lot of that was on her and she was truly sorry, but she didn’t know how to fix it or how much longer she’d stand there and take the blame for it in silence. She was who she was and she wanted to remind him that he loved that once. She wasn’t really all that different; his eyes were just open to it now. She’d always told him that she didn’t want him to conform for the sake of others. It didn’t seem fair that he was incapable of giving her the same consideration. He paused and then opened his eyes to stare at her.

“But five minutes in this car with you, and I feel… better. I don’t want to, but I do. How do you do that?” 

She blinked for a few moments trying to find a middle ground between her resentment and the surprise at his words. “Familiarity. Maybe all of that time spent trying to see the world through your eyes paid off.”

“Maybe.” He murmured and watched her a little longer before rolling towards the passenger window and curling into himself as much as the seatbelt would allow. He was done talking and she wasn’t sure exactly what had happened. _He needs to be home,_ her practicality asserted, so she started the car and drove to his place without another word.

He didn’t move in the twenty minutes it took to get from the airstrip to his apartment, and when she killed the engine in front of his building’s lobby he remained still just staring at it through the window. She watched him, wanting to nudge him towards the sanctuary of what he understood so that he could reclaim himself, but also aching to keep him there with her, if only for a few more minutes. It felt as though this was all she had left to give him and her mind kept repeating his words to her… _I feel… better._

“Do you want me to come up?”

She cringed the moment it left her lips. It was a stupid question, leading and suggestive. It showed him how desperate she was that if he wanted a meaningless fuck to ease all of this, she would agree to it gladly. But that wasn’t why she had come for him in the first place, and it wasn’t what she’d meant to say. The question implied that _that_ was all there had ever been between them when her reasons for hightailing it down from New York were so much more complicated. Besides, he’d see right through the elusive balm of a meaningless fuck.

“Umm,” She added quickly. “What I meant was-”

“I know what you meant. I didn’t take it that way.”

“Oh. Well… thanks. I just… I want to make sure that you’re going to be okay.”

He continued staring out the window. She started to get worried again.

“What will you do now?” She asked hesitantly.

Eventually he rolled so that his body was facing the front windshield. He wiped his hand over his face and then answered without looking at her.

“I’m going to sleep for about eighteen hours. And then I’m going to get up, drink an entire pot of coffee, and write my case report.”

She smiled a little as she pictured him hammering away at his laptop on his old couch allowing endless cups of coffee to go cold while he puzzled out the flaws in their strategy. The part of her that worried for him eased up. She watched as a filament of purpose lit him from underneath his exhaustion as he spoke.

“I’m going to figure out what went wrong so that I never have another memory of wading through a greenhouse full of dead kids.” He cocked his head sideways, not really looking at her but waiting for something. “And then, after that, I’ll wait for Hotch to call with our next case, because that’s what I do.”

He reached out suddenly and grabbed her hand, squeezing it tightly for a few moments before letting it go. He didn’t look at her, and a second later he opened the passenger door and began dumping his bags onto the curb in front of his building. The whole thing happened so quickly that she was left blinking in the cabin light as he hoisted himself out of the car. Every single part of her wanted him to stay. A month was too long to go without any hint of him, and she couldn’t wish a series of unfortunate events on him in the vague hope that she could justify reaching out again. He ducked his head down as he stood by the open door, looking in. His gaze flicked across her features and then darted away as if he saw something that he didn’t wish to acknowledge.

“Thank you for bringing me home.” He said.

“I… I just wanted to get you back to somewhere that felt safe so that you could… process this.”

“I know.”

He straightened and put his hand on the door to shut it without a goodbye. _He never was good with throwaway cordiality…_ But then he stopped and stooped again, looking at the door handle as though it were a curious alien being.

“It occurs to me that severing all connections between us may be ill advised. This… familiarity that you mentioned previously… it appears to be useful beyond the association that we once had.”

He waited a moment and she became mesmerized by the way his hand tightened on the door.

“It may be a mistake to throw it away entirely. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes.” She huffed and congratulated herself on making it sound normal.

“Okay then.” He nodded once, mind made up, and then shut the door, collected his bags and headed into his building as if he’d just stepped off a bus.

Prentiss sat in her car and watched his retreating figure until he was gone. And then she sat some more. This sliver of reconciliation seemed impossible to her. She didn’t know how to feel about it, so she just sat in the dark numb to everything around her until her mind landed on the simplest of responses.

“Okay then.” She echoed to herself, started the car, and drove away.

The next day she emailed the headhunter she’d hired in her job search and told him that she was now only interested in positions located in Virginia.


	40. Chapter 40

He was late, but that wasn’t entirely unexpected. She was halfway through her salad by the time she glanced him moving hurriedly across the crowded restaurant brushing rain from the shoulders of his coat. He sat down and mumbled a hello without looking at her. She smirked and lifted another forkful of salad.

“Forgot your umbrella?”

“Didn’t see the necessity since it was projected to be partially sunny and with steady barometric pressure…” He gritted through his teeth. “Idiots.”

She smiled at him patiently and waited for his gaze to flick up to hers. Eventually, it did and he apologized with a lop-sided grin before letting his attention fall to the menu.

“I ordered for you - the usual, since it’s Tuesday - I hope that’s okay…”

“Oh. Yes, that was very thoughtful. Thanks.” 

He put the menu aside and watched her hands as she pushed her salad around the plate. It was difficult readjusting herself to the way that he avoiding looking at her. She had to break him into it slowly every time they met up. It was just the price she had to pay, she told herself, even after six months. Trust is a hard-won thing.

“How’s the gang?” She breezed knowing that he always opened up a little when talking about the team.

“Well, their lives are a continuum,” He started, and then she mouthed to rest of his sentence along with him. “So they are as they should be at any point in the prescribed timeline…”

He looked up and caught her lip-syncing. “Why do you do that?”

“Because you always start every conversation about the team that way. As if I’m going to buy into your automaton act.”

The waiter arrived and planted a large cup of coffee in front of Reid unbidden. “It’s not an act.” Reid mumbled.

“Yes it is.” Prentiss murmured warmly and received a stare from him for her effort. “But listen, I have some good news: the C.I.A. cleared you. We can now _officially_ be friends.”

“Of course they cleared me. They offered me a job back in 2011…”

“Did they?”

“Yeah, as an analyst, like you. But since I didn’t possess your field experience, I would’ve been just a lowly cog in their machinery, not some grand spy master…”

Prentiss made a dismissive chuckle and went silent as the waiter returned with their entrees. She would always be keenly aware of how her job and what they spoke about would never be normal. “There’s very little about domestic threat assessment that qualifies as ‘grand’, despite my showy display of minions.”

“I bet you like having minions…” Reid ignored the cutlery and dove into his B.L.T. with eager hands.

“Yeah, okay, that part’s not bad. But they did give me a hard time about my best friend working for the Bureau.”

“Is that how you described me? As your best friend?”

She looked up then. He was chewing thoughtfully and staring at something out the window off to her left. It was an unconcerned look and, despite her best efforts to avoid hope whenever they got together, her heart sank as it always did. He usually did something like this each time; a subtle reminder of the revised positions that they held in one another’s lives. She wondered if there would ever come a time when it didn’t hurt.

“We are, aren’t we, Spencer?” She tried for composure but it still came out a little breathless. 

His gaze left the window and landed on her quickly before he focused on his sandwich again. “Yes, we are. I characterized you as my friend as well when they interviewed me.”

 _That’s something, I guess._ Her fork lowered to her plate of pasta and rested there. It was going to be a long road, and she had to make allowances for his cageyness and reticence, she told herself. They had come a certain way already and she was grateful that they even still spoke. She missed him desperately but had no right to say so - lunch every other week was the best that she could hope for. Perhaps, in time, he’d allow her into his thoughts again, so that they could have more meaningful conversations than the ignominy of meteorology or the hilarity of interagency dick-waving. Maybe, one day she’d be permitted the latitude to convince him that she wasn’t just an amoral asshole and that everything she’d ever told him about how she felt was one hundred percent genuine.

She sighed and looked up only to find him staring at her with an intensity that she hadn’t seen in over a year. She flinched unconsciously, smirking internally that she, too, was no longer used to how they once were, and then raised her eyebrows in curiosity. He didn’t take the bait - he just continued staring. She waited and waited, her cheeks flushing obviously, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of giving in. When she thought that she couldn’t stand another moment, when she was a second away from demanding that he just tell her whatever judgment he was passing on her, he dropped his gaze, wiped his hands and casually rooted around in his jacket pocket for something. 

“Well, since the Agency has cleared me, I guess it’s time to give you this.”

He produced a small box, rubbed smooth around the edges, and slid it across the table to her. She stared at it for a hard minute before she reached out and slowly opened it. She did not give herself permission to react when she saw the demure diamond and the simple setting. She laid her fingertips on either side of the fabric liner and let out a shaky breath.

“I don’t understand.” She told herself that she was holding it together fine even though her voice broke. “I don’t understand…”

“I’m asking if you want to try this again. It’s like the key situation, except this time there are legal and social strings attached.” There was no expectation, no anticipation in his expression as he watched her. He appeared completely calm and it made her feel as if she’d gone crazy while they both blinked. How had this come to pass? A minute before she would’ve settled for the knowledge that he _didn’t_ loathe her…

“But… we haven’t so much as kissed in the six months since I got back. A moment ago I was worried that you were going to be angry that I called you a friend…”

“I have a perfect memory of what it was like to kiss you. I didn’t feel the need to re-evaluate _that_.”

“But you needed to re-evaluate something didn’t you?” A tear broke her composure and slid down her face. She brushed it away furiously. 

“Yes, and that’s what I’ve spent my time doing. And not just re-evaluating you, I might add…”

“Can you explain that a little?”

“I’ll try.” His glance darted away again and she saw his fingers knit together nervously. “I’m not the person that I was when this all began. Perhaps that is an obvious statement, but the change wasn’t obvious to me. I was a man who had found a way to live without people and to ape their actions when I needed to. Now, I’ve discovered that people are the only thing that connects you to the world. They hurt you, they startle you, they rip you open and expose you… but it’s the only thing that matters.”

 _I’ll never be able to apologize enough, Spencer…_ She took a deep breath and let it out again. “Does this mean that you’ve forgiven me?” 

The lines around his eyes softened as he stared, and then he slouched back into his seat with a sigh. “I forgave you when you stopped trying to justify your actions and just accepted who you’d become as a result of them. You were right: we’re both a little grey but that’s also just a part of us. I don’t really care about moral ambiguity, Em; I only care about the truth. It was the lies I couldn’t stand - I needed to know if they were an essential part of you or not. I needed to reaffirm that I _believed_ what I knew about you.”

Her brow creased in confusion and he raised a hand to stop her.

“It’s no use being someone that you’re not, remember? It took me a while to see that for myself, to see that you were placed in a position where there were no good choices to be made. It took some time for me to recognize the emotions behind your decisions.”

She looked down at the box again and her mind just went blank. Unbelievable. Then, after a minute, her profiler’s brain started doing its work. She reached out and thumbed a worn edge of the box.

“How long have you been carrying this around?”

“One hundred and fifty-seven days. I had to be sure that you still felt something for me after… everything. Rossi said that the only reason you came back was for love, but… I needed to be certain before I risked again.”

Her eyes snapped to his. _So, since just after Tennessee…_ He leaned forward looking anxious for the first time.

“I also understand that you may be angry with me. For being inflexible, for the judgments, for imposing this distance between us… perhaps you’re just frustrated that I couldn’t let it all go, even though forgetting anything is next to impossible for me. You’d be entitled to resent me for hiding behind my neuroses about this…”

The haze of confusion cleared momentarily and she felt the smoldering embers of what he was describing deep within her. She _was_ angry that she felt she had to constantly apologize to him for simply doing what she had to do. And she did resent the ease with which he shut down and cut her off from everything they had built up between them. She’d never lied about how she felt. His numbness for nearly half a year had made her question the validity of her feelings entirely. How could anyone turn themselves off so suddenly, like switching the lights out before locking the door behind them?

“Yes.” She found herself speaking. “You left me here alone… alone, even though you might be sitting across from me… Maybe it’s a fair repayment for my actions but, it was… _cruel_ , Spencer.”

“I know. I understand that loneliness and I am sorry.”

His words were so simple and quiet that they prompted her to look up and see the unfiltered sadness that accompanied them. She had despaired that she’d ever get another moment like this again: when he was completely open to her. They had always been rare but she had collected them greedily, feeling as though they were some special secret that they only shared with each other. And suddenly, here it was again - the first time since she’d left him behind at The Cloak and Dagger. Something in her eased a little: he was letting her back in. Reid placed his hands on either side of his plate with care and leaned into them, as if the table was the only source of his stability in this situation.

“Listen, despite what you’ve said in the past, marrying me probably isn’t ideal for you. I’m nobody’s idea of a prime catch. But I promise that I’ll take you as you are and love you completely until the end. I told you once that I could never care for someone more than the work, but that’s only because I’d never had an experience to convince me otherwise. And you were right: there has to be something more, something that makes everything we do worthwhile. For me, that’s you - not the mysteries, not the work. You’re the only thing I want anymore.”

He fidgeted nervously in his seat and she could see him starting to falter, to question his own worth in this situation. “So… ummm, I guess that’s all I’ve got. It’s up to you if that’s enough.”

She touched the edge of the ring for the first time with her finger, and then she gently removed it from the display. Looking at it lying in the palm of her hand, she realized that the interior was inscribed: ‘Because you came back.’

 _Jesus, Spence…_ A hard lump formed in her throat and she found herself blinking too rapidly. She traced the statement, making the ring rotate and twinkle in her palm, and then she felt his hand land on her arm, his fingers move to cover hers as they fiddled.

“Put it on.” She whispered because he was suddenly right there crouching next to her in the crowded restaurant. She watched as he collected the ring and slipped it on her finger. She closed her eyes when she felt his hand leave her arm and fall into her hair. He pulled her close and she let him as his lips brushed her cheek and breathed her name so that only she could hear it.

“Thank you.” She murmured, clutching at his suit jacket to draw them together as tightly as they could manage. He’d made his bed, she thought. She’d never leave now unless he asked her to go.


	41. Chapter 41

Rossi walked into the conference room that Reid had commandeered for his yearly file reorganization. What would normally take a team of seasoned agents four months to collate, he did in about three days. While the entire team respected his skills, for about two and a half of the three days, it really just looked like Reid was playing with paper. He usually got a bit testy when interrupted but Rossi evidently thought that it was worth the risk.

“Reid, did you get this email from Emily about the get together on Saturday night? Can you explain to me why it says ‘formal attire requested’?”

Reid looked up for a second and saw Rossi waving his phone before his eyes dropped to his task with the sigh of a man settling in for the long haul. “I did not receive the email, but I will be there nonetheless.”

“Can you tell me what this is about, at least? How formal is ‘formal’?”

Reid’s hand shot out and dove into a pile of seemingly unconnected documents and retrieved one that made him smile for a second. “Emily and I are getting married on Saturday. Dress accordingly.”

“What?!”

Reid looked up, startled by Rossi’s alarm. “I’m not sure how my statement could have confused you…”

“Stay _right there_!”

Rossi bounded to the conference room door and shouted out into the bullpen. “Everyone get in here now.” He turned back and began texting furiously. “I gotta get Garcia in on this…”

“Rossi…”

“Wait, just wait.” Rossi held up his hand and Reid began stammering while not _actually_ managing to voice an objection. Slowly, the team filtered into the room, careful to avoid tipping any of Reid’s mysterious piles. When Garcia skittered in with a breathless ‘what’s up?’, Rossi turned to them all with a mischievous lop-sided grin.

“I assume that everyone received an e-vite from Emily for Saturday night…”

Heads around the room bobbed in recognition. Rossi’s grin got wider as he turned to face Reid and cocked his fingers like a six-shooter. “Go on. Tell ‘em what you just told me.”

Reid’s face flushed and he lowered his gaze to his incomprehensible mounds of paperwork. “The…umm… invitations are to Emily’s wedding. And mine. We’re getting married. To each other, just so we’re clear.”

Rossi made a proud little ‘ta-da’ gesture as the team spent a split second being speechless and blinky. Then chaos erupted as Morgan jumped forward and yanked Reid up and into a hug. J.J. and Garcia made matching squeals and piled on around Morgan as Hotch stood in the corner watching and grinning. Then the questions started…

“Congratulations…”

“How long has this been going on?”

“How did it happen?”

“Why would you keep it a secret?”

“Oh my God, you’re not pregnant, are you?”

“Do you need any help with the arrangements?”

“What should we bring?”

“All right, all right…” Hotch stepped into the fray and made everyone pipe down for a moment. “Give him some space and a moment to breathe or he might blow a circuit. Congratulations, Reid - this is great news. For both of you.”

“Thanks.” Reid smiled before shooting his eyes back to his feet again. He felt that his face was most likely an unmistakable shade of red. “I probably could’ve mitigated the shock of the announcement better. I rely on Em to help me with such social subtleties but she’s embroiled in something spooky and deeply classified at Langley this week.”

“Awww, honey.” Garcia wriggled through the bodies in front of her and enveloped Reid in a hug. He was proud that he only twitched a little. “You’re adorable. You must be so happy.”

“Well, I have conclusive proof that no other woman could make me happier. And she claims to be very fond of me also.”

That got a laugh and even Reid smiled in between twitchy looks and delicately stepping around his piles of documents.

“So, man,” Morgan chucked him on the shoulder. “You’re gonna be that guy now.”

“What guy?”

“The guy with the really hot wife that every other guy envies.”

“Really?” Reid felt slightly appalled. 

“Are you saying that you don’t think Prentiss is hot?”

“No, she is.” He vigorously nodded. “Indubitably. I guess that I’m just taken aback at the prospect of anyone coveting my life.”

“Well, get used to it.”

“That will take some doing. It’s funny, I never think about us in relation to other people. I only see her…” Reid suddenly thought about the way Prentiss’s hand moved when she brushed her hair from her face and smiled - how it always struck him as a warm opening sentence in a long-awaited conversation. He was only brought back to himself when Garcia made some sort of tearful choking sound - he didn’t think he could handle unexpected crying to this news. What does one _say_ to make someone stop doing that? 

“Ummm, anyway, it’s Saturday at seven, barring any inconvenient killers or terrorist acts. Just bring yourselves, we’ll take care of the rest.”

“There will be no cases on Saturday, Reid, I give you my word. Congratulations again.” Hotch intoned with a smile and then shuffled the team back into the bullpen without any unfortunate manifestation of tears. Clearly his boss wanted to give him a break from the social scrutiny, no doubt because he wouldn’t receive such latitude from his friends on Saturday. Reid made a mental note to expect crying on that occasion. Rossi stepped forward and held out his hand.

“I’m proud of you, kid.”

Reid shook his hand although he was unsure about it. “Proud? Why?”

“Because I know what you had to do to get to this point.” Rossi murmured. “But you made good choices, and now you’ll be rewarded for them. I’ll be one of those envious guys on Saturday night, Reid.”

Rossi gave Reid a wink that was as mysterious to him as the handshake had been and wandered out of the conference room. Reid rocked on his feet and watched his colleague cross the bullpen and eventually disappear into his office. Then he pulled out his phone and dialed the first number on his contacts list.

_“Prentiss.”_

“Hey. Are you busy?”

There were shuffling noises over the phone and then a click. When she spoke again her voice dropped a little into a warmer range.

_“I’ve got a few minutes for a pal at the Bureau. What’s up?”_

“You should probably expect a flurry of emails in the next few hours.”

_“Oh no. What happened?”_

“Rossi got the e-vite and started asking me questions while I was focusing on something else… and, well, everyone knows now. I’m sorry - I’m really bad at this.”

 _“You really are.”_ She chuckled. _"Oh well, it’s not as if it would’ve been a secret after Saturday anyway… How did they take it?”_

“Pretty well. Everyone wanted to touch me - I’m assuming that’s a positive indicator. I think Garcia asked if we were pregnant, so expect a question about that. Actually… she said ‘are _you_ pregnant’, but I’m sure that she meant it to be the informal plural…”

Laughter echoed across the line. _“You’re not, are you?”_

“And spoil my girlish waistline? Perish the thought.” He smiled as he felt his cheeks heat again and then lowered his voice. “I love hearing you laugh…”

_“Good. I’m sure that there will be plenty of that in our future.”_

“Our future…” He murmured and enjoyed the sensation that the words gave him. “Oh, and Morgan said that other men will envy me and, presumably, disparage my good fortune. It was an eye-opener, I must say…”

_“Disparage your good fortune?”_

“For having a hot wife.”

 _“Really.”_ Her voice got softer, which didn’t do anything to dispel her hotness factor. Reid wondered if she was aiming for seduction or irony.

“Yes. I’m worried that I’m not more paranoid about this. You work in an intense, alpha male environment, after all. And it goes without saying that there is little that can be done to diminish your considerable sex appeal…”

He heard a sigh. _“Why, Doctor, I believe that you’re flirting with me.”_

“It’s probably best to be upfront about this sort of thing. I’ve had problems with being unclear in the past. You turn me on just by walking into a room, Agent Prentiss. My desire for you is an unabashedly terrible need.”

She was quiet for a moment but he could hear her breathing as he presumed she moved the phone closer to her. _“We should’ve started this over the phone years ago - we might have avoided so much misunderstanding with this kind of frankness.”_

“It takes trust to be truthful.” He got serious. “And trust takes time.”

 _“You won’t need to worry about envious men, Spencer, even as a joke. I’ve found what I was looking for.”_ She took a deep breath as if trying to recover some composure, and that thought made him lose a little of his own. _“Besides, you’re sexually indispensable, remember? This whole marriage thing is just a ploy to lock that down before you wise up.”_

He paused for a moment. “Strangely, I’m okay with that.”

She was laughing again. Bliss. _“Well, then, I guess all of my duplicity was unnecessary.”_

“Yes. I thought that my acquiescence to sexual servitude was obvious.”

She almost guffawed. Well, at least that’s how it sounded to him. He was now grinning like an idiot.

_“You can’t say things like that when I’m at the office. This is a serious place - laughter is seen as a threat to national security… You should probably get back to work.”_

“Yes.” He didn’t want to get back to work at all. It was probably a mistake to call her in the middle of the day to begin with. Now that they no longer worked together, he felt a little greedy about whatever time they carved out for themselves. He could become quite distracted by his need to have more. “Emily?”

_“Yeah?”_

“I, uh… I’ve loved you for two thousand one hundred and one days.” He wasn’t sure why he said it other than he’d never told her that before and perhaps she ought to know. After all, it didn’t feel like enough – and it never felt like he said it enough. “But I wasn’t in love when I finished your star puzzle on the jet.”

She paused before answering. _“Maybe it’s just enough that I was in love that day.”_

“You were?”

_“I think that it might have started then, yeah, but I just didn’t recognize it.”_

“W-wow.” He stuttered because never in a million years would he have assumed _that_.

_“There’s a way that you can make it up to me though…”_

“Oh, yeah? How?”

_“Dance with me at my wedding, Doctor.”_

“Deal.” Perhaps Rossi could give him a few pointers before Saturday, just so no one got hurt. “Umm… perhaps I should mention it more… that I love you, I mean. I’d like to make it up to you that way. I’d probably be moved to say it often…”

The confession made him feel oddly vulnerable.

 _“Even in public?”_ She sounded a little shocked. Why would she be shocked?

“I don’t know. I’ve come to understand that public expressions of affection can be annoying to others.”

_“Perhaps we could use a code.”_

He paused for a moment but the answer was obvious to him. “Giraffe. The code is giraffe.”

She murmured something that he didn’t catch and his brain began spinning out possible answers when he heard muffled voices in the background. Prentiss must have covered the phone because he couldn’t hear her response, and when she came back she was using her ‘professional’ voice. _“Sorry, I have to go. The minions tell me that the sky is falling.”_

“Oh, umm… yes. Of course.”

The call disconnected abruptly before he even finished his sentence. He looked at his phone and then slowly placed it in his pocket and turned back to his piles of paperwork. They didn’t seem as interesting to him as they had minutes before. 

It had been wrong to call her - now he was distracted and that would affect his collating. Maybe he was getting _too_ emotional in his interactions with her… He hadn’t made a conscious decision to do that, she just brought it out in him and he didn’t see any reason to hide it now that they were going to make their pair bond permanent. Maybe it was the idea of permanency _with him_ … Perhaps it made her nervous - he didn’t want to make her nervous. People spoke of ‘cold feet’ before marriage and it seemed like something to be assiduously avoided. Perhaps he shouldn’t have told her how long he’d loved her. Maybe placing a number on it lessened it somehow. And he definitely shouldn’t have told her that he was indifferent when he solved the star puzzle. It suggested that his love was newer than hers, although he could see no correlation between duration and intensity in these matters. He just wanted to tell her that it had overcome a lot of change… that it was _unchangeable_ … Was he over-thinking this? 

His pocket began to vibrate as he looked at the mass of paper at his feet and let his mind fritter. He fished out his phone again and saw the text message:

_* Giraffe *_

He smiled - big and goofy and unashamed - as his fingers quickly flicked over the keypad and pressed SEND. 

When he looked back to the papers, the psych evaluation that was missing from the July case notes stack stuck out to him like a sore thumb. He hopped over the delicate piles, snatched the errant report with a flourish and placed it in the appropriate stack. Then he saw the coroner’s report from the fifth victim in the Henshaw case languishing in the duplicate reports folder from the Yarmouth kidnapping, and despaired that no one in his department gave a damn about organization but him. Honestly, sometimes it was as though no one understood how _one detail_ could change everything.

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Notes:
> 
> New Day Organic Farm was loosely informed by an agricultural commune near Summertown, TN known as The Farm. The Farm has never been a labeled as a cult community or investigated for any illegal activity to my knowledge. I just used the location and its insular community status as inspiration.
> 
> The Cloak and Dagger is the name of a real pub in my hometown. The look and feel of it as described here is inspired by Arts & Crafts decorated bars in New York like The King Cole Bar, The Waverly Inn, and the Palio Bar. Delancy's, however, is wholly made up ;)
> 
> Prentiss refers to both she and Reid inhabiting certain problematic places on the psychological spectrum. While there isn’t a spectrum model that covers all possible personality types, disorders, and conditions, there is a lot of overlap. In this story, I have imagined Reid as falling into the high functioning area of the Autism spectrum, whereas Prentiss’s moral flexibility might inhabit the psychosis or personality disorder spectrum. Both of them would just be flirting with the edges of these labels as they are functional and empathetic despite their deficiencies. Also, people who skew too far into one spectrum or another would never make it past the psychological screening process for the FBI, so I couldn't make them too extreme and still ensure that it was believable. I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist or even a behavioral analyst so all of this should be taken with a huge grain of salt.


End file.
